OS Command InjectionWeakness · CWE-78

CVE-2026-1665

MEDIUM · 5.4 CVSS v4.0 Published 2026-01-29
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
54/100
Remediation priority · Moderate
Patch available

Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.

NVD · unedited
A command injection vulnerability exists in nvm (Node Version Manager) versions 0.40.3 and below. The nvm_download() function uses eval to execute wget commands, and the NVM_AUTH_HEADER environment variable was not sanitized in the wget code path (though it was sanitized in the curl code path). An attacker who can set environment variables in a victim's shell environment (e.g., via malicious CI/CD configurations, compromised dotfiles, or Docker images) can inject arbitrary shell commands that execute when the victim runs nvm commands that trigger downloads, such as 'nvm install' or 'nvm ls-remote'.

Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.

dbcve analysis
How this class of weakness works · CWE-78

User input reaches a shell or system command without being fully separated from the command itself, so an attacker can append their own instructions. Because these run with the application's privileges, it often means full control of the host. The lasting fix is to avoid the shell entirely — call APIs directly and pass arguments as data, never as concatenated strings.

General guidance for the os command injection class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.

From the vector
Attack vector
Local
Complexity
Low
Privileges
Low
Authentication
X
User interaction
P
Scope
X

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

nvm v0.40.4 or later (latest stable release)

  1. Verify current nvm version by running 'nvm --version'
  2. Backup any custom nvm configuration or dotfiles that may contain NVM_AUTH_HEADER
  3. Upgrade nvm to the latest version by running: curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.40.3/install.sh | bash or fetch the latest release from https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm/releases
  4. Source the new nvm installation: export NVM_DIR="$HOME/.nvm" && [ -s "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh" ] && \. "$NVM_DIR/nvm.sh"
  5. Verify the new version is loaded: nvm --version
  6. Ensure NVM_AUTH_HEADER is not set with untrusted values in shell profiles, CI/CD environments, or Docker images
Caveat None expected - this is a security patch release

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2026-1665 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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