What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2025-13437: Arbitrary node_modules Directory Deletion in Google zx

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.6 v4.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.1% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2025-11-20 · updated 2026-10-18
• Weakness: CWE-706

Description

When zx is invoked with --prefer-local=<path>, the CLI creates a symlink named ./node_modules pointing to <path>/node_modules. Due to a logic error in src/cli.ts (linkNodeModules / cleanup), the function returns the target path instead of the alias (symlink path). The later cleanup routine removes what it received, which deletes the target directory itself. Result: zx can delete an external <path>/node_modules outside the current working directory.

Affected products

• Google zx: 8.8.4

References

• https://github.com/google/zx/issues/1348

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