Vulnerability · Published Sep 21, 2026 · Assigned by harborist

CVE-2026-94185nvm alias resolution follows `..` and discloses files outside $NVM_DIR/alias

Medium 5.5

In plain English

A medium-severity path traversal 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 0.2% (higher than 13% of all known vulnerabilities).

Severity (CVSS 3.1)5.5Medium

Exploit odds (30 days)0.2%top 87.2% of all CVEs

Exploited in the wildNo reportsCISA SSVC: none

Attack toolingNoneno public tooling known

Official description

nvm resolves a requested version or alias by treating it as a filename under $NVM_DIR/alias. Before 0.40.8, nvm_alias() concatenated the requested name onto that directory and read the result with no containment check, so a name containing a `..` component escaped the alias directory; under the default layout an alias such as `../../.npmrc` resolves to a file in the user's home directory. nvm_print_alias_file() then emits every non-comment, non-empty line of whatever was opened. A version string taken from an untrusted .nvmrc reaches this path, so a developer who runs `nvm use`, `nvm install`, or `nvm which` inside an attacker-supplied repository discloses the first non-comment line of an arbitrary file readable by that user, in the resulting "is not yet installed" error message. A user-supplied `nvm alias <traversing-name>` discloses every non-comment line of the target file. There is no integrity or availability impact, and no command execution on this path.

Affected products (as reported)

Vendor	Product	Versions
nvm-sh	nvm	0 – through 0.40.7

Weakness: CWE-22, CWE-200 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N

References

GHSA-8grh-q73j-ffrc vendor-advisory