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Fencer Intel
critical 9.8

CVE-2017-5941 in the critical feed json

Code Execution through IIFE in node-serialize

published 2017-02-09 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-q4v7-4rhw-9hqm , EUVD-2018-0309

cvss
9.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
61.3%
EPSS 61.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 99.1%
public exploits
3
Exploit-DB

Summary

An issue was discovered in the node-serialize package 0.0.4 for Node.js. Untrusted data passed into the unserialize() function can be exploited to achieve arbitrary code execution by passing a JavaScript Object with an Immediately Invoked Function Expression (IIFE).

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2017-5941 updated cvss 9.8

node-serialize: arbitrary code execution via untrusted data passed into the unserialize() function

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (EDB-45265)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

61.29% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 99.1% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • EDB-50036 Node.JS - 'node-serialize' Remote Code Execution (3) webapps, 2021-06-18
  • EDB-49552 Node.JS - 'node-serialize' Remote Code Execution (2) webapps, 2021-02-10
  • EDB-45265 Node.JS - 'node-serialize' Remote Code Execution remote, 2017-02-08
  • opsecx.com https://opsecx.com/index.php/2017/02/08/exploiting-node-js-deserialization-bug-for-remote-code-execution/ referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified
  • packetstormsecurity.com http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/161356/Node.JS-Remote-Code-Execution.html referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 7.5 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.1 9.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
npm node-serialize
<=0.0.4
 no fix listed

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-502 Deserialization of Untrusted Data

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.