How severe is CVE-2023-39956?

CVE-2023-39956 has a CVSS score of 6.1/10, rated MEDIUM. Review your exposure and patch according to your risk tolerance.

Which packages are affected by CVE-2023-39956?

CVE-2023-39956 affects the following packages: electron (npm), electron (npm), electron (npm), electron (npm), electron (npm). Ecosystems affected: npm.

How do I fix CVE-2023-39956?

Update electron to 22.3.19 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-39956 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

How do I detect CVE-2023-39956 in my npm dependencies?

Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for electron. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.

How do I mitigate CVE-2023-39956 if there is no patch (or I can't update yet)?

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 does O3 Security protect against CVE-2023-39956?

O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2023-39956 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Is CVE-2023-39956 actively exploited in the wild?

No public exploit code has been indexed for CVE-2023-39956 yet. This does not mean the vulnerability cannot be exploited — absence of public exploits does not imply safety. Apply the recommended fix and use O3 Security to monitor your exposure.

What is the EPSS score for CVE-2023-39956?

CVE-2023-39956 has an EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) score of 0.6%, placing it in the 42th percentile of all CVEs. EPSS is maintained by FIRST.org and estimates the probability that a vulnerability will be exploited in the wild within the next 30 days. This score indicates relatively lower exploitation probability, though the CVSS severity should still guide your patching priority.

What type of vulnerability is CVE-2023-39956?

CVE-2023-39956 is classified as Code Injection (CWE-94). This weakness type describe the underlying flaw category, which helps determine the potential impact and the right class of mitigation. This is a high-impact weakness class that often enables remote code execution or data exposure.

When was CVE-2023-39956 published, and has it been updated?

CVE-2023-39956 was published on September 6, 2023 and was last updated on March 14, 2026. Advisory data evolves as severity scores, affected ranges, and exploit intelligence are revised — always check the latest version of the advisory before acting.

CVE-2023-39956: electron (Medium 6.1)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗

0.6%probability of exploitation in next 30 days

Lower Risk42th percentile+0.54%

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.

Blast Radius

5 pkgs affected

Weekly download volume for affected packages — a proxy for how broadly this vulnerability is deployed.

electronnpm

4.8Mdownloads / week

Description

Electron is a framework which lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Electron apps that are launched as command line executables are impacted. Specifically this issue can only be exploited if the following conditions are met: 1. The app is launched with an attacker-controlled working directory and 2. The attacker has the ability to write files to that working directory. This makes the risk quite low, in fact normally issues of this kind are considered outside of our threat model as similar to Chromium we exclude Physically Local Attacks but given the ability for this issue to bypass certain protections like ASAR Integrity it is being treated with higher importance. This issue has been fixed in versions:26.0.0-beta.13, 25.4.1, 24.7.1, 23.3.13, and 22.3.19. There are no app side workarounds, users must update to a patched version of Electron.

Affected Packages

5 total 5 fixed

Ecosystem	Package	Vulnerable range	Fix
📦npm	`electron`	all versions	22.3.19
📦npm	`electron`	≥ 23.0.0-alpha.1&&< 23.3.13	23.3.13
📦npm	`electron`	≥ 24.0.0-alpha.1&&< 24.7.1	24.7.1
📦npm	`electron`	≥ 25.0.0-alpha.1&&< 25.5.0	25.5.0
📦npm	`electron`	≥ 26.0.0-alpha.1&&< 26.0.0-beta.13	26.0.0-beta.13

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency

Detect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for electron. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update electron to 22.3.19 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2023-39956 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 pinpoints whether CVE-2023-39956 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.

Tailored to CVE-2023-39956. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Electron is a framework which lets you write cross-platform desktop applications using JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Electron apps that are launched as command line executables are impacted. Specifically this issue can only be exploited if the following conditions are met: 1. The app is launched with an attacker-controlled working directory and 2. The attacker has the ability to write files to that working directory. This makes the risk quite low, in fact normally issues of this kind are considered outside of our threat model as similar to Chromium we exclude Physically Local Attacks but given t

O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2023-39956 in your dependencies?

O3 detects CVE-2023-39956 across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.

Scan my dependencies How O3 SCA works

CVE-2023-39956