Vulnerability · Published Nov 4, 2026 · Assigned by harborist
CVE-2026-121748nvm use --delete-prefix lets a project .npmrc choose which file npm rewrites or makes world-writable
Low 3.6
In plain English
A low-severity security flaw in nvm from nvm-sh. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.1% (higher than 2% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
Node Version Manager (nvm) is a POSIX-compliant shell function for managing multiple node.js versions. In versions 0.27.0 through 0.40.8, when a project's `.npmrc` sets `prefix`, `nvm use` tells the user to run `nvm use --delete-prefix`, which runs `npm config delete prefix` and `npm config delete globalconfig` in the current directory without naming a config file. npm loads the project `.npmrc` before deciding which file to edit, so that file chooses the target: `userconfig=~/.bashrc` makes npm rewrite `~/.bashrc` as ini (corrupting it), and `location=global` with `globalconfig=` leaves the chosen file at mode 0666, which on a shared machine lets another local user write to it. The attacker (the author of a cloned repository or archive, or a local user who can write a shared parent directory) chooses the file but not the bytes written, and no project code runs. Version 0.41.0 no longer lets a project `.npmrc` select which config file `--delete-prefix` edits.
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-73 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L
References
- GHSA-ccgf-7gv4-xg5h vendor-advisory
- Fix commit 4049296c patch