Nx daemon and plugin worker sockets are accessible to other local usersGHSA-w3vv-58gj-gw77
Fix: nrwl/nx#36370GHSA-w3vv-58gj-gw77 is a Improper Privilege Management vulnerability in nx. A fix is available for nx — see the affected versions and patch details below.
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-w3vv-58gj-gw77.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
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.
nxnpmDescription
Summary
Nx creates the Unix domain sockets for its daemon and its plugin workers in a shared temporary directory with default permissions, so any other user on the same machine can connect to them. The daemon accepts a PROCESS_IN_BACKGROUND request that names a module to load and invokes its default export, which turns socket access into code execution inside the daemon process. On a multi-user machine — a shared build server, a shared developer box, or a container running several accounts — one local user can execute code as another user running Nx.
Severity
Exploitable by any other unprivileged local user on a shared host while a daemon or plugin worker is running, with no user interaction. There is no known evidence of exploitation in the wild.
Affected & Patched Versions
| Package | Vulnerable | Patched |
|---|---|---|
nx | >= 14.6.0, < 22.7.9; >= 23.0.0, < 23.1.2 | 22.7.9, 23.1.2 |
Every version in the ranges above is affected. The lower bound is 14.6.0, when the daemon request handler that turns socket access into code execution was added.
[!IMPORTANT] Single-user machines are not exposed. The vulnerability requires another local account on the same host, so an ordinary laptop with one user account is unaffected — the exposure is shared CI runners, shared build and development servers, and containers or images that run more than one uid.
Disabling the daemon is not sufficient on its own: the plugin worker sockets used by plugin isolation are created in the same directory with the same permissions, and those are used during normal command runs whether or not the daemon is enabled.
Remediation
Upgrade to 22.7.9 (22.x line) or 23.1.2 (23.x line) or later:
nx migrate 23.1.2
On a shared machine, run nx reset after upgrading so that any sockets and directories created by an older version are removed rather than reused.
If you cannot upgrade, point NX_SOCKET_DIR at a directory you own with mode 0700, which is already honoured by the vulnerable versions, and disable the daemon with NX_DAEMON=false to reduce the reachable surface — though, per the callout above, that does not remove the plugin worker sockets.
Details
The daemon and the plugin workers communicate over Unix domain sockets placed in a subdirectory of the shared OS temporary directory. That directory is created with default permissions, which on a typical system leave it readable and traversable by every user on the machine, and nothing narrows the socket files themselves. The directory name is derived from a hash of the workspace path and the process id, so it is unique but not secret — any local user who lists the temporary directory can find it.
The connection carries no authentication: the containment is meant to be the filesystem permissions alone, and those are too broad. Any local process that can reach the socket is treated as a fully trusted client.
The impact of that access is set by what the daemon's request handlers allow. One handler takes a module path from the request and loads and invokes it; because an absolute path resolves regardless of the lookup constraints in place, a caller who can write a file anywhere on the machine — their own home directory suffices — and connect to the socket can have the daemon execute it, as the user running the daemon. Other handlers expose workspace file contents, the project graph, and task hashes to the same unauthenticated caller.
Credits
Reported by researchers at the University of Sydney:
- Liyi
- Ziyue
- Strick
- Maurice
- Chenchen
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 📦npm | nx | ≥ 14.6.0&&< 22.7.9 | 22.7.9npm install nx@22.7.9 |
| 📦npm | nx | ≥ 23.0.0&&< 23.1.2 | 23.1.2npm install nx@23.1.2 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for nx, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update nx to 22.7.9 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-w3vv-58gj-gw77 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Close the privilege gap rather than the entry point: audit which accounts, roles and service identities can reach the affected operation, drop the component to the least privilege it actually needs, and review file and directory permissions created by earlier installs — a default left in place is what makes this reachable.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This issue affects the Nx build tooling daemon and plugin-worker Unix sockets. In Red Hat products where Nx appears in source manifests (including Grafana, Ansible Automation Platform UI components, and related offerings), Nx is used only as a build-time or development dependency and is not present or executed in the…
Red Hat is not aware of any mitigation or workaround that addresses this vulnerability at this time. Customers are advised to apply the relevant security update once available.Source: Red Hat security advisory for GHSA-w3vv-58gj-gw77 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
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