What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2022-35978: Lua sandbox escape from mod in Minetest

• Severity: critical (CVSS 10.0 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 3.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2022-08-15 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-693

Description

Minetest is a free open-source voxel game engine with easy modding and game creation. In **single player**, a mod can set a global setting that controls the Lua script loaded to display the main menu. The script is then loaded as soon as the game session is exited. The Lua environment the menu runs in is not sandboxed and can directly interfere with the user's system. There are currently no known workarounds.

Affected products

• minetest: before 5.6.0 — fixed in 5.6.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: minetest 5.6.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://dev.minetest.net/Changelog#5.5.0_.E2.86.92_5.6.0
• https://github.com/minetest/minetest/commit/da71e86633d0b27cd02d7aac9fdac625d141ca13
• https://github.com/minetest/minetest/security/advisories/GHSA-663q-pcjw-27cc
• https://dev.minetest.net/Changelog#5.5.0_.E2.86.92_5.6.0
• https://github.com/minetest/minetest/commit/da71e86633d0b27cd02d7aac9fdac625d141ca13
• https://github.com/minetest/minetest/security/advisories/GHSA-663q-pcjw-27cc

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