1

CVE-2024-51481: nixos nix Protection Mechanism Failure

CVSS: 1.0v4.0LowDeferred
Published 31-10-2024Last modified 31-10-2024
Open JSON

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2024-51481 is a low (CVSS 1.0) Protection Mechanism Failure vulnerability in nixos nix. EPSS estimates a 0.17% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 6.1% of scored vulnerabilities.

Overall risk
4/100
0100
Minimal · default modelHow is this calculated?
CVSS score
1.0/10
010
Low · v4.0 (CVE.org)
EPSS score
0.17%
0%100%
Low · 0.00 pp in 30 days
KEVNot listedIn no KEV catalog
RansomwareNone recordedNo known use recorded
Public exploits0No public exploits recorded

Timeline

  1. 31-10-2024
    PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
  2. 31-10-2024
    Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

Nix is a package manager for Linux and other Unix systems. On macOS, built-in builders (such as `builtin:fetchurl`, exposed to users with `import <nix/fetchurl.nix>`) were not executed in the macOS sandbox. Thus, these builders (which are running under the `nixbld*` users) had read access to world-readable paths and write access to world-writable paths outside of the sandbox. This issue is fixed in 2.18.9, 2.19.7, 2.20.9, 2.21.5, 2.22.4, 2.23.4, and 2.24.10. Note that sandboxing is not enabled by default on macOS. The Nix sandbox is not primarily intended as a security mechanism, but as an aid to improve reproducibility and purity of Nix builds. However, sandboxing *can* mitigate the impact of other security issues by limiting what parts of the host system a build has access to.

CVSS metrics

2 scores · 2 sources · 1 version

EPSS trend

Probability

0.17%

Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days

Percentile

6%

Versus all other CVEs

30-day change

0.00 pp

From 0.17% on 21-09-2026

21-09-202621-10-2026
EPSS score
0.17%

Known exploited

Compare KEV catalogs

Not in any of the 3 tracked catalogs.

Public exploits

0 found

No public exploits indexed.

Weaknesses

CWE · root cause

Affected systems

Nixos1 product
  • nix< 2.18.9 | ≥ 2.19.0, < 2.19.7, 2.20.9, 2.21.5, 2.22.4, 2.23.4, 2.24.10 (No fix recorded) | ≥ 2.20.0, < 2.20.9 | ≥ 2.21.0, < 2.21.5 | ≥ 2.22.0, < 2.22.4 | ≥ 2.23.0, < 2.23.4 | ≥ 2.24.0, < 2.24.10

1 vendor · 1 product

References

2 links