CVE-2026-121749

nvm passes the version pattern to grep without -e, letting a .nvmrc inject grep options and read local files

Node Version Manager (nvm) is a POSIX-compliant shell function for managing multiple node.js versions. In versions 0.5.0 through 0.40.8, the requested version pattern is passed to `grep` as a bare argument, without `-e`, in `nvm_ls_remote_index_tab`, `nvm_remote_version`, and `nvm_ls_cached`. A `.nvmrc` whose first line starts with `-`, such as `-Rohenpm_[A-Za-z0-9]*`, is parsed as grep options; with GNU grep, `-R` searches the current directory recursively (following symlinks) instead of the version list. On a bare `nvm install`, nvm then treats a matched string from those files as the version, prints it, and requests it from the configured mirror inside download URLs, so for example a repository containing a symlink to `../../.npmrc` can leak the user's npm token to the terminal and to the mirror's and any proxy's logs. The disclosure is read-only and limited to the characters `0-9A-Za-z._+-`. Version 0.41.0 passes every version pattern to grep with `-e`.

CVSS v3 Breakdown

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