pnpm up to 10.28.0 path traversal

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in pnpm up to 10.28.0. It has been declared as critical. Impacted is an unknown function. Such manipulation leads to path traversal. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2026-23890. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit. It is recommended to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in pnpm up to 10.28.0. It has been rated as critical. Affected by this issue is some unknown processing. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a path traversal vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-23. The product uses external input to construct a pathname that should be within a restricted directory, but it does not properly neutralize sequences such as ".." that can resolve to a location that is outside of that directory. Impacted is confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

pnpm is a package manager. Prior to version 10.28.1, a path traversal vulnerability in pnpm's bin linking allows malicious npm packages to create executable shims or symlinks outside of `node_modules/.bin`. Bin names starting with `@` bypass validation, and after scope normalization, path traversal sequences like `../../` remain intact. This issue affects all pnpm users who install npm packages and CI/CD pipelines using pnpm. It can lead to overwriting config files, scripts, or other sensitive files. Version 10.28.1 contains a patch.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-23890 since 01/16/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. Successful exploitation requires user interaction by the victim. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1006.

Upgrading to version 10.28.1 eliminates this vulnerability. The upgrade is hosted for download at github.com. Applying the patch 8afbb1598445d37985d91fda18abb4795ae5062d is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

The vulnerability is also documented in the vulnerability database at EUVD (EUVD-2026-4656). Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Name

• pnpm

Version

• 10.0
• 10.1
• 10.2
• 10.3
• 10.4
• 10.5
• 10.6
• 10.7
• 10.8
• 10.9
• 10.10
• 10.11
• 10.12
• 10.13
• 10.14
• 10.15
• 10.16
• 10.17
• 10.18
• 10.19
• 10.20
• 10.21
• 10.22
• 10.23
• 10.24
• 10.25
• 10.26
• 10.27
• 10.28.0

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://github.com/pnpm/pnpm/

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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