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MEDIUM severity

CVE-2019-5438 — harp

MEDIUM

CVE-2019-5438 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Path Traversal vulnerability in harp. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for harp — see the affected versions and patch details below.

Unauthorized File Access in harp

Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
1 known
Exploitation data as of Oct 7, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
1.5%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs73th percentile — riskier than 73% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.00%0.66%1.32%1.98%0.2%1.5%Apr 26Aug 26Oct 26

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

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2019-5438 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 395,249 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.

25other npm packages depend on this — each one inherits the vulnerability until it's patched upstream
harpnpm
1Kdownloads / week

Description

All versions of harp are vulnerable to Unauthorized File Access. If a symlink in the project's base directory points to a file outside of the directory, the file is served. This could allow an attacker to access sensitive files on the server.

Recommendation

No fix is currently available. Consider using an alternative module until a fix is made available.

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
📦npmharpall versions0.40.3npm install harp@0.40.3

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
harpharpjs
≤ 0.29.0
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.

Path traversal using symlink in npm harp module versions <= 0.29.0.

hackerone.comNVDOct 2020

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

  1. Detect

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

  2. Fix

    Update harp to 0.40.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2019-5438 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    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

All versions of `harp` are vulnerable to Unauthorized File Access. If a symlink in the project's base directory points to a file outside of the directory, the file is served. This could allow an attacker to access sensitive files on the server. ## Recommendation No fix is currently available. Consider using an alternative module until a fix is made available.
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

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CVE-2019-5438: harp — Fixed in 0.40.3