Executive brief
CycloneDX cyclonedx-npm is a command-line tool used to generate software bill-of-materials (SBOM) documents from npm projects. On Windows systems, the tool is vulnerable to shell command injection when the --workspace argument is provided with specially crafted values, allowing an attacker to execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the user running the tool. This could lead to data theft, system compromise, or malicious modifications to files.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a classic OS command injection (CWE-78) in the Windows fallback execution path of @cyclonedx/cyclonedx-npm. When the CLI is invoked with a --workspace argument, the untrusted value is incorporated into a shell command without proper escaping or neutralization on Windows systems. An attacker can inject shell metacharacters (>, &, |, etc.) to break out of the intended command context and execute arbitrary OS commands. Exploitation requires the attacker to supply or influence the --workspace value passed to the CLI, typically through user input, script parameters, or configuration files. No user interaction beyond invoking the tool with a malicious workspace value is required. The fix, released in version 6.0.0, ensures workspace values are sanitized and no longer passed to the vulnerable shell execution path. Affected versions are all releases prior to 6.0.0.
Affected products
- CycloneDX cyclonedx-npm < 6.0.0
Timeline
- 2026-07-07: disclosed: Published to GitHub Advisory Database
- 2026-09-17: patched: Fixed in version 6.0.0