CVE-2024-38355: 
JavaScript vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Socket.IO, an open source real-time bidirectional event-based communication framework, contains a vulnerability (CVE-2024-38355) where a specially crafted Socket.IO packet can trigger an uncaught exception on the Socket.IO server, causing the Node.js process to terminate (GitHub Advisory). The vulnerability affects Socket.IO versions <2.5.0 and >=3.0.0,<4.6.2.

The vulnerability stems from an unhandled 'error' event that can cause the Node.js process to crash with an ERR_UNHANDLED_ERROR when receiving specially crafted packets. The issue has been assigned a CVSS v3 base score of 7.3 (High severity) with the vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L, indicating network accessibility, low attack complexity, and no required privileges or user interaction (CISA Advisory).

When successfully exploited, this vulnerability can lead to a denial-of-service condition by causing the Node.js process to terminate unexpectedly. This affects the availability of the Socket.IO server and any dependent services (CISA Advisory).

The vulnerability has been fixed in Socket.IO version 4.6.2 (released in May 2023) with commit 15af22fc22 and backported to the 2.x branch with commit d30630ba10. Users are advised to upgrade to socket.io@4.6.2 or socket.io@2.5.1. As a temporary workaround, users can attach a listener for the 'error' event to catch these errors (GitHub Advisory).