Researchers disclose critical sandbox escape bug in vm2 sandbox library

The development team behind the vm2 JavaScript sandbox library addressed a critical Remote Code Execution vulnerability.

The developers behind the vm2 JavaScript sandbox module have addressed a critical vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-29017 (CVSS score 9.8), that could be exploited to execute arbitrary shellcode.

vm2 is a sandbox that can run untrusted code in an isolated context on Node.js servers, it has approximately four million weekly downloads and its library is part of 722 packages.

The flaw was reported by the security researcher Seongil Wi from South Korean security firm KAIST WSP Lab.

The vulnerability affects all versions, including and prior to 3.9.14, it was addressed with the release of version 3.9.15.

“vm2 was not properly handling host objects passed to Error.prepareStackTrace in case of unhandled async errors.” reads the advisory published by vm2. “A threat actor can bypass the sandbox protections to gain remote code execution rights on the host running the sandbox.”

Wi also published two proof-of-concept (PoC) exploits for this vulnerability that can be used to escape the sandbox to create an empty file named “flag” on the host.

In October 2022, VM2 maintainers addressed another critical sandbox escape vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-36067.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, sandbox)

Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.