Node.js released security updates on January 13, 2026, fixing vulnerabilities that could cause memory leaks, denial-of-service attacks, and permission bypasses. These updates fix three critical vulnerabilities, among others, urging immediate upgrades for affected systems.
High Severity Vulnerabilities:
CVE-2025-55131 reveals critical flaws in Buffer.alloc and Uint8Array, resulting from timeout races in the vm module, which could lead to the unintended exposure of sensitive secrets such as tokens.
CVE-2025-55130 facilitates symlink attacks that can bypass filesystem permission flags like –allow-fs-read, granting unauthorized access to files. CVE-2025-59465 leads to HTTP/2 server crashes caused by malformed HEADERS frames, resulting in unhandled TLSSocket errors that can induce remote denial-of-service (DoS).
| CVE ID | Severity | Description Summary | Affected Versions | Reporter/Fixer |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2025-55131 | High | Buffer alloc race exposes prior data | 20.x,22.x,24.x,25.x | Nikita Skovoroda/RafaelGSS |
| CVE-2025-55130 | High | Symlink bypasses FS permissions | 20.x,22.x,24.x,25.x | natann/RafaelGSS |
| CVE-2025-59465 | High | HTTP/2 malformed frame causes server crash | 20.x,22.x,24.x,25.x | dantt/RafaelGSS |
CVE-2025-59466 is a medium vulnerability that causes uncatchable stack overflow errors through async_hooks, leading to DoS bypass. CVE-2025-59464 is another medium risk that leaks memory during TLS client certificate processing due to OpenSSL UTF-8 conversions.
CVE-2026-21636 allows bypassing network permissions using Unix Domain Sockets in the v25 experimental model. CVE-2026-21637 enables TLS PSK/ALPN callbacks to throw exceptions, which can crash servers or leak file descriptors.
Low Severity Fix:
CVE-2025-55132 allows fs.futimes() to modify timestamps without write permissions, undermining read-only isolation in permission models from v20 to v25.​
Updates feature c-ares 1.34.6 and undici (6.23.0 or 7.18.0) for vulnerability fixes. New Node.js versions are 20.20.0, 22.22.0, 24.13.0, and 25.3.0, accessible through standard channels.
Node.js encourages users to upgrade, especially for production HTTP/2 servers and environments with permissions, as outdated branches are vulnerable.
The Node.js team acknowledges several researchers for their contributions, highlighting community teamwork in enhancing security. Various delays allowed for comprehensive testing prior to today’s launch.
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