CVE-2023-32559: Node.js

High severity, CVSS 7.5. EPSS: 1.8% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in the experimental policy mechanism in all active release lines: 16.x, 18.x and, 20.x. The use of the deprecated API `process.binding()` can bypass the policy mechanism by requiring internal modules and eventually take advantage of `process.binding('spawn_sync')` run arbitrary code, outside of the limits defined in a `policy.json` file. Please note that at the time this CVE was issued, the policy is an experimental feature of Node.js.

Affected products

• Node.js Node.js: from 16.0.0, up to and including 16.20.1; from 18.0.0, up to and including 18.17.0; from 20.0.0, up to and including 20.5.0

Published 2023-08-24. Last modified 2026-06-17.