CVE-2020-8174: 
npm vulnerability analysis and mitigation

CVE-2020-8174 is a high-severity vulnerability affecting Node.js versions prior to 10.21.0, 12.18.0, and 14.4.0. The vulnerability was disclosed in June 2020 and involves memory corruption issues in the napigetvaluestring*() functions. When calling napigetvaluestringlatin1(), napigetvaluestringutf8(), or napigetvaluestringutf16() with a non-NULL buf and a bufsize of 0, the entire string value would be written to the buffer, potentially causing buffer overflow (Node.js Blog).

The vulnerability exists in Node.js's N-API string handling functions. Specifically, when calling napigetvaluestringlatin1(), napigetvaluestringutf8(), or napigetvaluestringutf16() with a non-NULL buf parameter and a bufsize of 0, the functions would write the entire string value to the buffer without proper bounds checking. This could lead to memory corruption through buffer overflow. The vulnerability received a CVSS 3.1 score of 8.1 (High) (Ubuntu Security).

A successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to cause memory corruption, potentially leading to arbitrary code execution. The vulnerability affects both the Node.js runtime and applications using the node-addon-api package. The high severity rating indicates significant potential impact on system security (Node.js Blog).

Users are strongly advised to update to the patched versions: Node.js 10.21.0, 12.18.0, or 14.4.0 and later. For those using node-addon-api, versions 1.x and 2.x were updated to address this vulnerability. Maintainers supporting EOL Node.js versions or building against versions without internal N-API support should update to the new versions of node-addon-api (Node.js Blog).