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📦
📦 npm
Not in CISA KEV
HIGH severity

CVE-2017-16091 — xtalk

HIGH

CVE-2017-16091 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.5) Path Traversal vulnerability in xtalk. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.

Directory Traversal in xtalk

Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
See advisory
Exploits
1 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 8, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
1.8%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs78th percentile — riskier than 78% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.03%0.79%1.54%2.29%0.5%1.8%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2017-16091 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 385,386 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected

How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.

1other npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream
xtalknpm
22downloads / week

Description

Affected versions of xtalk are vulnerable to directory traversal, allowing access to the filesystem by placing "../" in the URL.

Example request:

GET /../../../../../../../../../../etc/passwd HTTP/1.1
host:localhost

Recommendation

No patch is currently available for this vulnerability, and the package has not been updated since 2014.

The best mitigation is currently to avoid using this package, and using a different, functionally equivalent package.

Affected Packages

1 total
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
📦npmxtalk≥ 0.0.2No fix

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
xtalkxtalk_project
≥ 0.0.2
range
Exploits & PoCs
1

Research use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.

xtalk helps your browser talk to nodex, a simple web framework. xtalk is…

nodesecurity.ioNVDOct 2019

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for xtalk, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Remediation status

    No patched version of xtalk has shipped for CVE-2017-16091 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.

  3. Mitigate without a patch

    Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.

Frequently Asked Questions

Affected versions of `xtalk` are vulnerable to directory traversal, allowing access to the filesystem by placing "../" in the URL. **Example request:** ```http GET /../../../../../../../../../../etc/passwd HTTP/1.1 host:localhost ``` ## Recommendation No patch is currently available for this vulnerability, and the package has not been updated since 2014. The best mitigation is currently to avoid using this package, and using a different, functionally equivalent package.
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CVE-2017-16091: xtalk: Directory Traversal