Cyber Resilience

CVE-2021-39134

High

Published: 31 August 2021

Published
31 August 2021
Modified
21 November 2024
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 8.2 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0072 72.9th percentile
Risk Priority 17 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2021-39134 is a high-severity UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following (CWE-61) vulnerability in Oracle Graalvm. Its CVSS base score is 8.2 (High).

Operationally, ranked in the top 27.1% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

`@npmcli/arborist`, the library that calculates dependency trees and manages the `node_modules` folder hierarchy for the npm command line interface, aims to guarantee that package dependency contracts will be met, and the extraction of package contents will always be performed into…

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the expected folder. This is, in part, accomplished by resolving dependency specifiers defined in `package.json` manifests for dependencies with a specific name, and nesting folders to resolve conflicting dependencies. When multiple dependencies differ only in the case of their name, Arborist's internal data structure saw them as separate items that could coexist within the same level in the `node_modules` hierarchy. However, on case-insensitive file systems (such as macOS and Windows), this is not the case. Combined with a symlink dependency such as `file:/some/path`, this allowed an attacker to create a situation in which arbitrary contents could be written to any location on the filesystem. For example, a package `pwn-a` could define a dependency in their `package.json` file such as `"foo": "file:/some/path"`. Another package, `pwn-b` could define a dependency such as `FOO: "file:foo.tgz"`. On case-insensitive file systems, if `pwn-a` was installed, and then `pwn-b` was installed afterwards, the contents of `foo.tgz` would be written to `/some/path`, and any existing contents of `/some/path` would be removed. Anyone using npm v7.20.6 or earlier on a case-insensitive filesystem is potentially affected. This is patched in @npmcli/arborist 2.8.2 which is included in npm v7.20.7 and above.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.

Affected Assets

npmjs
arborist
≤ 2.8.2
oracle
graalvm
20.3.3, 21.2.0
siemens
sinec infrastructure network services
≤ 1.0.1.1

Mitigating Controls

No mitigating controls mapped yet. The per-CVE control annotator has not reached this CVE.

References