CVE-2022-36077 — electron
HIGHCVE-2022-36077 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.2) Information Exposure vulnerability in electron. A fix is available for electron — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Electron subject to Exfiltration of hashed SMB credentials on Windows via file:// redirect
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-2022-36077.
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.
electronnpmDescription
Impact
When following a redirect, Electron delays a check for redirecting to file:// URLs from other schemes. The contents of the file is not available to the renderer following the redirect, but if the redirect target is a SMB URL such as file://some.website.com/, then in some cases, Windows will connect to that server and attempt NTLM authentication, which can include sending hashed credentials.
Patches
This issue has been fixed in all current stable versions of Electron. Specifically, these versions contain the fixes:
- 21.0.0-beta.1
- 20.0.1
- 19.0.11
- 18.3.7
We recommend all apps upgrade to the latest stable version of Electron.
Workarounds
If upgrading isn't possible, this issue can be addressed without upgrading by preventing redirects to file:// URLs in the WebContents.on('will-redirect') event, for all WebContents:
app.on('web-contents-created', (e, webContents) => {
webContents.on('will-redirect', (e, url) => {
if (/^file:/.test(url)) e.preventDefault()
})
})
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory, email us at [email protected].
Credit
Thanks to user @coolcoolnoworries for reporting this issue.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | electron | all versions | 18.3.7npm install electron@18.3.7 |
| 📦npm | electron | ≥ 20.0.0-beta.1&&< 20.0.1 | 20.0.1npm install electron@20.0.1 |
| 📦npm | electron | ≥ 19.0.0-beta.1&&< 19.0.11 | 19.0.11npm install electron@19.0.11 |
Affected Products
electronelectronjsDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for electron, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update electron to 18.3.7 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-36077 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Assume what was exposed is already known: rotate any credential, token or key that the affected component could return, restrict the endpoint to callers that genuinely need it, and strip sensitive fields from responses and error output at the boundary rather than relying on the client not to read them.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-36077 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.