CVE-2023-26156 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.6) OS Command Injection vulnerability in chromedriver. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for chromedriver — see the affected versions and patch details below.
chromedriver Command Injection vulnerability
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2023-26156.
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.
chromedrivernpmDescription
Versions of the package chromedriver before 119.0.1 are vulnerable to Command Injection when setting the chromedriver.path to an arbitrary system binary. This could lead to unauthorized access and potentially malicious actions on the host system.
Note:
An attacker must have access to the system running the vulnerable chromedriver library to exploit it. The success of exploitation also depends on the permissions and privileges of the process running chromedriver.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | chromedriver | all versions | 119.0.1npm install chromedriver@119.0.1 |
Affected Products
chromedriverchromedriver_projectResearch 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 chromedriver, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update chromedriver to 119.0.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-26156 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2023-26156 in your dependencies?
Find it across npm, including transitive dependencies.