CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-28081 — Facebook Hermes security vulnerability

Critical CVSS 9.8

A bytecode optimization bug in Hermes prior to commit e6ed9c1a4b02dc219de1648f44cd808a56171b81 could be used to cause an use-after-free and obtain arbitrary code execution via a carefully crafted payload. Note that this is only exploitable in cases where Hermes is used to execute untrusted JavaScript. Hence, most React Native applications are not affected.

Severity
Critical
CVSS
9.8 (3.1)
Published
2023-05-18
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
javascript/npm
Weaknesses
CWE-416

Affected products

  • facebook / hermes

Matched remediation archetype

Use-after-free, double free, and expired resource use

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Trace ownership, references, callbacks, asynchronous tasks, and teardown paths around the affected object or resource.
  • Identify reachable inputs and timing or state transitions that can release the object while references remain.
  • Confirm affected builds, allocators, feature flags, architectures, and process privileges.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the maintained ownership or lifetime fix and rebuild all artifacts containing the affected native code.
  • Use explicit ownership, safe reference management, cancellation and join semantics, and idempotent teardown.
  • Add deterministic lifetime tests plus isolated sanitizer and concurrency coverage for shutdown and error paths.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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