GHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54 — pkg
MEDIUMGHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54 is a medium-severity (CVSS 6.6) Incorrect Default Permissions vulnerability in pkg. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
Pkg Local Privilege Escalation
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- 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 GHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54.
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
GHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54 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 379,145 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.
pkgnpmDescription
Impact
Any native code packages built by pkg are written to a hardcoded directory. On unix systems, this is /tmp/pkg/* which is a shared directory for all users on the same local system. There is no uniqueness to the package names within this directory, they are predictable.
An attacker who has access to the same local system has the ability to replace the genuine executables in the shared directory with malicious executables of the same name. A user may then run the malicious executable without realising it has been modified.
Patches
This package is deprecated. Therefore, there will not be a patch provided for this vulnerability.
Recommended Action:
To check if your executable build by pkg depends on native code and is vulnerable, run the executable and check if /tmp/pkg/ was created.
Users should transition to actively maintained alternatives. We would recommend investigating Node.js 21’s support for single executable applications.
Workarounds
Given the decision to deprecate the pkg package, there are no official workarounds or remediations provided by our team. Users should prioritize migrating to other packages that offer similar functionality with enhanced security.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | pkg | all versions | No fix |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pkg, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Remediation status
No patched version of pkg has shipped for GHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54 yet. Where your build allows, override or pin the dependency away from the vulnerable range, and apply any maintainer-recommended mitigation.
Mitigate without a patch
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 GHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-22r3-9w55-cj54 across npm dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.