The package manager pnpm prior to version 9.15.0 seems to mishandle overrides and global cache: Overrides from one workspace leak into npm metadata saved in global cache; npm metadata from global cache affects other workspaces; and insta…

Overview

The package manager pnpm prior to version 9.15.0 seems to mishandle overrides and global cache: Overrides from one workspace leak into npm metadata saved in global cache; npm metadata from global cache affects other workspaces; and installs by default don't revalidate the data (including on first lockfile generation). This can make workspace A (even running with ignore-scripts=true) posion global cache and execute scripts in workspace B. Users generally expect ignore-scripts to be sufficient to prevent immediate code execution on install (e.g. when the tree is just repacked/bundled without executing it). Here, that expectation is broken. Global state integrity is lost via operations that one would expect to be secure, enabling subsequently running arbitrary code execution on installs. Version 9.15.0 fixes the issue. As a work-around, use separate cache and store dirs in each workspace.

Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.