CVE-2021-24044 — hermes-engine
CRITICALCVE-2021-24044 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-843 vulnerability in hermes-engine. A fix is available for hermes-engine — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Access of Resource Using Incompatible Type in Hermes
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2021-24044 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 378,156 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
How broadly this vulnerability is actually deployed: weekly install volume shows current usage, a proxy for how much of the ecosystem is exposed.
hermes-enginenpmDescription
By passing invalid javascript code where await and yield were called upon non-async and non-generator getter/setter functions, Hermes would invoke generator functions and error out on invalid await/yield positions. This could result in segmentation fault as a consequence of type confusion error, with a low chance of RCE. This issue affects Hermes versions prior to v0.10.0.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | hermes-engine | all versions | 0.10.0npm install hermes-engine@0.10.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for hermes-engine, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update hermes-engine to 0.10.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-24044 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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2021-24044 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2021-24044. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-24044 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2021-24044 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.