CVE-2020-7598 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.6) CWE-1321 vulnerability in minimist. 1 public exploit reference exists, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for minimist — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Prototype Pollution in minimist
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2020-7598.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2020-7598 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 394,803 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
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.
minimistnpmDescription
Affected versions of minimist are vulnerable to prototype pollution. Arguments are not properly sanitized, allowing an attacker to modify the prototype of Object, causing the addition or modification of an existing property that will exist on all objects.
Parsing the argument --__proto__.y=Polluted adds a y property with value Polluted to all objects. The argument --__proto__=Polluted raises and uncaught error and crashes the application.
This is exploitable if attackers have control over the arguments being passed to minimist.
Recommendation
Upgrade to versions 0.2.1, 1.2.3 or later.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | minimist | all versions | 0.2.1npm install minimist@0.2.1 |
| 📦npm | minimist | ≥ 1.0.0&&< 1.2.3 | 1.2.3npm install minimist@1.2.3 |
Affected Products
leapopensuseminimistsubstackResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for minimist, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update minimist to 0.2.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2020-7598 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
Red Hat Quay only includes minimist as a dependency of the test suites, and it not include it in the product. We may fix this issue in a future Red Hat Quay release.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Openshift Service Mesh 1.0 | jaeger-0:v1.13.1.redhat7-1.el7 | RHSA-2020:2362 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | nodejs:10-8020020200617141353.4cda2c84 | RHSA-2020:2848 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | nodejs:12-8020020200630155331.4cda2c84 | RHSA-2020:2852 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.0 Update Services for SAP Solutions | nodejs:10-8000020200617115915.f8e95b4e | RHSA-2020:3042 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 Extended Update Support | nodejs:12-8010020200630154708.c27ad7f8 | RHSA-2020:2847 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.1 Extended Update Support | nodejs:10-8010020200617134056.c27ad7f8 | RHSA-2020:2849 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 | atomic-openshift-web-console-0:3.11.248-1.git.1.cc96c2d.el7 | RHSA-2020:2992 |
| Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.6 | openshift4/ose-console:v4.6.0-202010100121.p0 | RHSA-2020:4298 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2020-7598 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.