CVE-2023-29198 — electron
MEDIUMCVE-2023-29198 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6) CWE-754 vulnerability in electron. A fix is available for electron — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Context isolation bypass via nested unserializable return value in Electron
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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-2023-29198.
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-2023-29198 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 377,166 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, and reverse-dependency count shows how many other packages break if it stays unpatched.
electronnpmDescription
Electron is a framework which lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Electron apps using contextIsolation and contextBridge are affected. This is a context isolation bypass, meaning that code running in the main world context in the renderer can reach into the isolated Electron context and perform privileged actions. This issue is only exploitable if an API exposed to the main world via contextBridge can return an object or array that contains a javascript object which cannot be serialized, for instance, a canvas rendering context. This would normally result in an exception being thrown Error: object could not be cloned. The app side workaround is to ensure that such a case is not possible. Ensure all values returned from a function exposed over the context bridge are supported. This issue has been fixed in versions 25.0.0-alpha.2, 24.0.1, 23.2.3, and 22.3.6.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | electron | all versions | 22.3.6npm install electron@22.3.6 |
| 📦npm | electron | ≥ 23.0.0-alpha.1&&< 23.2.3 | 23.2.3npm install electron@23.2.3 |
| 📦npm | electron | ≥ 24.0.0-alpha.1&&< 24.0.1 | 24.0.1npm install electron@24.0.1 |
| 📦npm | electron | ≥ 25.0.0-alpha.1&&< 25.0.0-alpha.2 | 25.0.0-alpha.2npm install electron@25.0.0-alpha.2 |
Detection & 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 22.3.6 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-29198 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-2023-29198 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2023-29198. 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-2023-29198 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2023-29198 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.