What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-43998: vm2: NodeVM require.root bypass via symlink traversal allows sandbox escape

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2026-05-13 · updated 2026-10-26
• Weakness: CWE-59

Description

vm2 is an open source vm/sandbox for Node.js. In 3.10.5, NodeVM's require.root path restriction can be bypassed using filesystem symlinks, allowing sandboxed code to load modules from outside the allowed root directory in host context. Because path validation uses path.resolve() (which does not dereference symlinks) but module loading uses Node's native require() (which does), an attacker can load arbitrary host-realm modules and achieve remote code execution. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.11.0.

Affected products

• patriksimek vm2: 3.10.5

References

• https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/security/advisories/GHSA-cp6g-6699-wx9c
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2026:50850
• https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-43998
• https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2477206
• https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/security/advisories/GHSA-cp6g-6699-wx9c
• https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/2026/cve-2026-43998.json

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