GHSA-25mx-2mxm-6343
CRITICAL@keystone-6/core's NODE_ENV defaults to development with esbuild
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.
Blast Radius
Weekly download volume for affected packages — a proxy for how broadly this vulnerability is deployed.
@keystone-6/corenpmDescription
Impact
@keystone-6/[email protected] || 3.0.1 users that use NODE_ENV in their own code (not dependencies) to trigger security-sensitive functionality in a production build are vulnerable to NODE_ENV being inlined to "development" for user code.
If your dependencies use NODE_ENV to trigger particular behaviours (optimisations, security or otherwise), they should still respect your environment's configured NODE_ENV variable and thereby be unaffected.
If you do not use NODE_ENV in your own code to trigger security-sensitive functionality, you are not impacted by this vulnerability.
An example of code that would be affected, might be the following:
if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production') {
// this code would unintentionally run in your production builds
}
Technical Description
The problem comes from esbuild defaulting NODE_ENV to "development" when a platform configuration is undefined.
You can read about why esbuild has that behaviour in their documentation, but the result for Keystone users is that user Typescript was compiled, and had inlined NODE_ENV to the constant "development".
Your application's dependencies, as found in node_modules (including @keystone-6/core), are typically not compiled as part of this process, and thus should be unaffected. Therefore any libraries that used NODE_ENV to trigger particular behaviours (optimisations, security or otherwise) should still respect your environment's NODE_ENV.
We have tested this assumption by verifying that NODE_ENV=production yarn keystone start still uses secure cookies when using statelessSessions.
Thereby, the severity of this vulnerability is dependent on what functionality users conditionally triggered, in their own code, depending on the expectation that NODE_ENV would be correctly configured in their application. In accordance with Common Vulnerability Scoring System 2.3.3. Assume Vulnerable Configurations, this security advisory assumes vulnerable configurations and is thus marked as critical, but you should evaluate the true security impact for your application to determine a relevant score.
Patches
This vulnerability has been fixed in @keystone-6/[email protected], thanks to @mmachatschek in https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone/pull/8031/.
We have added regression tests for this vulnerability in https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone/pull/8063.
Workarounds
If you cannot upgrade your @keystone-6/core version for any reason, your best alternative is to remove any code that uses NODE_ENV in a way that may reasonably impact your application security.
References
- https://esbuild.github.io/api/#platform
- https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone/pull/8031
- https://github.com/keystonejs/keystone/pull/8063
For more information
Thanks to Austin Burdine for reporting this problem as a potential security vulnerability.
If you have any questions around this security advisory, please don't hesitate to contact us at [email protected], or open an issue on GitHub.
If you have a security flaw to report for any software in this repository, please see our SECURITY policy.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | @keystone-6/core | ≥ 3.0.0&&< 3.0.2 | 3.0.2 |
Research 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 @keystone-6/core. 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 @keystone-6/core to 3.0.2 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-25mx-2mxm-6343 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 GHSA-25mx-2mxm-6343 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 GHSA-25mx-2mxm-6343. 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-25mx-2mxm-6343 in your dependencies?
O3 detects GHSA-25mx-2mxm-6343 across npm dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.