CVE-2021-44906 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) CWE-1321 vulnerability in minimist. 4 public exploit or proof-of-concept references are indexed, 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.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
- 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-2021-44906.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
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
Minimist prior to 1.2.6 and 0.2.4 is vulnerable to Prototype Pollution via file index.js, function setKey() (lines 69-95).
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | minimist | ≥ 1.0.0&&< 1.2.6 | 1.2.6npm install minimist@1.2.6 |
| 📦npm | minimist | all versions | 0.2.4npm install minimist@0.2.4 |
Affected Products
minimistsubstackResearch 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 1.2.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-44906 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.
As minimist is an argument parsing module for nodejs, exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to influence which arguments are passed to nodejs when running a script. Red Hat products and services are designed in such a way that gaining this ability is not trivial. Additionally, the impact is limited…
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| OpenShift Service Mesh 2.1 | openshift-service-mesh/kiali-rhel8:1.36.9-1 | RHSA-2022:1739 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | nodejs:16-8070020221207164159.bd1311ed | RHSA-2022:9073 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | nodejs:14-8070020221212161539.bd1311ed | RHSA-2023:0050 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.4 Extended Update Support | nodejs:14-8040020230306170312.522a0ee4 | RHSA-2023:1533 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.6 Extended Update Support | nodejs:14-8060020230306170237.ad008a3a | RHSA-2023:1742 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 | nodejs-1:16.18.1-3.el9_1 | RHSA-2023:0321 |
| Red Hat Fuse 7.11.1 | io.hawt-hawtio-integration | RHSA-2022:8652 |
| Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform | org.jboss.hal/hal-console:3.3.13.Final-redhat-00001 | RHSA-2022:5928 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-44906 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.