CriticalCVE-2026-48027

    Compromised Nx Console version 18.95.0 (CVE-2026-48027)

    Published Last modified In CISA KEV since Sources: pwn.watch, CVE.org, EUVD

    What is affected, what to do

    Nx Console is the user interface for Nx & Lerna. On 19 May 2026, a malicious version of Nx Console, 18.95.0, was published at 12:30 PM UTC and removed soon after at 12:48 PM UTC, leaving it available for ~18 minutes in Visual Studio Marketplace.

    The vulnerability is being actively exploited; treat it as a priority. CISA lists it as used in ransomware campaigns. The available sources name no fixed version. Check the vendor guidance in the references below. Immediate actions, mitigation and detection rules are in the runbook below.

    Affected
    • Nrwl Nx-console eq 18.95.0..18.95.0

    Not sure whether and how you are affected? Ask a question about this vulnerability

    Metrics

    9.8

    Priority

    XIEM Effective CVSS: highest available CVSS rating from NVD and vendor data.

    Source: NVD, CVSS v3

    9.8

    CVSS v3

    Severity Critical on the scale from 0 to 10.

    Source: pwn.watch, CVE.org, EUVD

    1.8 %

    EPSS score

    Moderate — model estimates 1-10% exploitation likelihood.

    Source: FIRST EPSS, percentile 79.1

    Show all metrics
    Severity
    Critical
    Priority (0–325)

    The priority score is a consolidated metric that condenses several individual signals into a single, action-guiding ranking: technical severity (CVSS), exploitation likelihood (EPSS), known-exploited status (KEV) and the context of the affected asset. The aim is to answer the only truly important question in vulnerability management: what first?

    Read in glossary
    241.99 Methodology
    Exploit maturity

    An exploit is code or a technique that specifically uses a concrete vulnerability to force unintended behaviour — such as executing code or escalating privileges. It is the tool that turns a theoretical flaw into a practical attack.

    Read in glossary
    actively exploitedSource: VulnCheck KEV (opens in a new tab) How we classify
    XIEM Effective CVSS

    XIEM® is the tiered managed-security operating model from NEOSEC and a registered trademark of NEOSEC GmbH. It extends classic SIEM — the central collection, normalisation and correlation of security-relevant events — with endpoint forensics, network visibility and deception technology, and consolidates them into three building tiers: Sentry, Orchestrate and Command.

    Read in glossary
    9.8 Methodology
    CVSS v3

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    9.8
    CVSS v4

    CVSS is the globally established, open standard for assessing the technical severity of a vulnerability on a scale from 0 to 10. It describes how easily a flaw can be exploited and what damage it can cause — but not how likely its actual exploitation is. CVSS and the complementary EPSS deliberately answer different questions.

    Read in glossary
    9.3
    EPSS score

    The EPSS score is the absolute model output for an individual vulnerability: the estimated probability of real-world exploitation within the next 30 days, expressed as a value between 0 and 1 (i.e. 0 % to 100 %). A score of 0.42 means „the model estimates a 42 % chance of real-world exploitation within 30 days“.

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    1.8 %
    Moderate — model estimates 1-10% exploitation likelihood.
    EPSS percentile

    The EPSS percentile is the relative position of a vulnerability within all EPSS-scored CVEs, expressed as a value between 0 and 1. A percentile of 0.90 means „this CVE has a higher EPSS score than 90 % of all other scored CVEs“. Unlike the EPSS score, it is not a probability — but a positioning within a ranking.

    Read in glossary
    79.1
    High — this CVE ranks above the median of all CVEs scored today (rank ≥ 36%).
    KEV status

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited
    Published
    In CISA KEV since

    The KEV catalogue is a list maintained by the US authority CISA of vulnerabilities for which active exploitation in the wild has been confirmed. It answers not the question „how severe?“ but „is it already being attacked?“ — thereby sharply prioritising patching.

    Read in glossary
    CISA assessment (SSVC)
    Exploitation: active · automatable · Technical impact: total
    Source: CISA Vulnrichment, as of 27 May 2026
    CWE

    CWE is a catalogue of typical weakness types in software and hardware — such as flawed input validation, unsafe memory handling or poor authentication. Where a CVE names a concrete vulnerability in a concrete product, a CWE describes the underlying class of defect.

    Read in glossary
    CWE-506

    Response and mitigation

    Why act now?

    Prioritisation rationale

    This is a supply-chain compromise rather than an exploitable bug. A trusted publishing channel delivered the payload, and auto-update executed it with full user rights on developer machines without any user interaction. The exposure window was short, but developer endpoints usually hold the keys to source code, package registries, CI/CD and cloud tenants. CISA's known-ransomware flag confirms that harvested credentials are being turned into follow-on intrusions. Any organisation running Nx/Lerna monorepos or Angular tooling should treat a positive inventory hit as a confirmed incident and assess NIS2 reporting obligations. A clean inventory lowers the urgency, but unmanaged extension updates remain a structural gap that needs closing.

    1. Runbook step 1

      Immediate response (0-24 h)

      • Inventory affected installs: Sweep developer workstations, build agents and remote dev environments (Codespaces, dev containers, VDI) for Nx Console 18.95.0. Typical path: ~/.vscode/extensions/nrwl.angular-console-18.95.0* or %USERPROFILE%\.vscode\extensions\. Include OpenVSX-backed editors (VSCodium, Cursor, Windsurf, Gitpod/Theia). Run: code --list-extensions --show-versions | grep -i angular-console.
      • Upgrade to 18.100.0 and purge 18.95.0: The advisory states 18.100.0 is clean. Removing the extension does not undo theft, so treat any host that ever ran 18.95.0 as compromised.
      • Correlate the exposure window: Prioritise installs or auto-updates on 2026-05-19 between 12:30 and 12:48 UTC (Visual Studio Marketplace) or between 12:33 and 13:09 UTC (OpenVSX). Also check internal mirrors or caches that may have picked up the package and served it later.
      • Rotate every secret reachable from affected hosts: This covers GitHub/GitLab PATs and SSH keys, npm/registry tokens (.npmrc), cloud credentials (~/.aws/credentials, Azure/GCP CLI caches), Nx Cloud tokens, kubeconfigs, .env files, and browser or password-manager sessions. Because the payload also scraped memory, revoke active sessions and OAuth refresh tokens server-side as well.
      • Isolate and preserve: Collect an EDR triage package, the extension directory and shell history before remediation. Reimage rather than clean if there is any sign of second-stage tooling.
      • Check downstream supply-chain impact: Review commits, pushes, npm publishes and CI pipeline changes made with the exposed identities since 2026-05-19 for unauthorised modifications.

    2. Runbook step 2

      Mitigation layers

      • Configuration management / allowlisting: Enforce extension control centrally (VS Code enterprise policy extensions.allowed, GPO/MDM). Allow approved publishers and pinned versions only. Disable extensions.autoUpdate on managed clients and stage updates through a release gate.
      • Internal extension mirror: Run a private OpenVSX or marketplace proxy that holds new versions in quarantine for several days. A short-lived compromise like this one would never reach endpoints.
      • Network segmentation / egress: Force editor processes (Code.exe, Code Helper, node extension host) through a proxy with a destination allowlist (marketplace, OpenVSX, GitHub, internal registries). Log and block everything else.
      • IAM / least privilege: Replace long-lived tokens with short-lived ones (OIDC federation for CI, SSO-bound fine-grained PATs, aws sso instead of static keys). Require 2FA or trusted publishing for npm. Gate production access from developer laptops behind PAM or just-in-time elevation.
      • Endpoint hardening: Keep secrets off disk in plaintext. Use hardware-backed or confirm-on-use SSH agents and OS keychain credential helpers. Enable EDR rules for credential-file reads by editor child processes.

    3. Runbook step 3

      Detection rules

      • File telemetry (Sysmon EID 11 / EDR file events, Linux auditd): Look for nrwl.angular-console-18.95.0 in extension directories. KQL: DeviceFileEvents | where FolderPath has "angular-console-18.95.0".
      • Credential access by editor processes: Flag reads by node/Code Helper (Plugin) of ~/.ssh/id_*, ~/.aws/credentials, ~/.npmrc, ~/.config/gh/hosts.yml, ~/.kube/config or browser profile stores. auditd: -w /home/ -p r -k cred_read, filtered to extension-host processes. On Windows, watch for Credential Manager/DPAPI access (EID 5379).
      • Process ancestry (Sysmon EID 1): Alert when the extension host (Code.exe → node) spawns curl, wget, powershell -enc, bash -c or executes scripts from temp directories. Sigma shape: ParentImage|endswith: '\Code.exe' AND Image|endswith: ['\powershell.exe','\cmd.exe','\curl.exe'].
      • Network (Sysmon EID 3/22, Zeek dns.log/conn.log): Watch for DNS lookups and connections from editor processes to non-allowlisted domains from 2026-05-19 12:30 UTC onward, especially paste sites, webhook endpoints or newly registered domains.
      • Identity telemetry: Review the GitHub audit log (oauth_access, personal_access_token), npm token usage, and CloudTrail/Entra sign-ins for exposed identities from unusual IPs or ASNs after the window.

    Detection rules

    No NEOSEC detection rule is available for this vulnerability yet.

    Classification under NIS2 and CRA

    Rule-based classification from exploitation status and severity. It does not replace a case-by-case assessment.

    NIS2

    NIS2 is EU Directive (EU) 2022/2555 to raise the level of cybersecurity across the Union. It substantially broadens obligations compared with the first NIS directive: more sectors, mandatory risk management, staged reporting duties and personal accountability of senior management.

    Read in glossary
    Actively exploited: treat the vulnerability as a priority in vulnerability handling under Art. 21(2)(e) NIS2. If it is exploited in your environment, check the reporting obligation under Art. 23 (early warning within 24 hours).
    CRA

    The CRA is EU Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 setting horizontal cybersecurity requirements for „products with digital elements“ — from industrial controllers and software to connected consumer devices. For the first time manufacturers must ensure security across the entire product lifecycle, handle vulnerabilities and provide security updates.

    Read in glossary
    Since 11.09.2026, manufacturers of affected products with digital elements must report actively exploited vulnerabilities under Art. 14 CRA, with an early warning within 24 hours via ENISA's single reporting platform.
    ISO/IEC 27001

    ISO/IEC 27001 is the internationally leading standard for an information security management system (ISMS). It describes a risk-based, process-oriented framework to systematically plan, implement, review and improve information security.

    Read in glossary
    Control A.8.8, management of technical vulnerabilities: assess relevance to your systems, plan remediation and keep evidence.

    Description

    Nx Console is the user interface for Nx & Lerna. On 19 May 2026, a malicious version of Nx Console, 18.95.0, was published at 12:30 PM UTC and removed soon after at 12:48 PM UTC, leaving it available for ~18 minutes in Visual Studio Marketplace. For OpenVSX, the problem was detected later, and the compromised version was available from 12:33 UTC to 13:09 UTC (~36 minutes). Version 18.100.0 of Nx Console is not compromised and users may remediate by upgrading to that version.

    Source: pwn.watch, cvelistv5, ENISA EUVD, NVD (NIST), CISA KEV Catalog, CVE.org (MITRE)

    Affected products

    The following versions are affected. Older releases of the same product line are also vulnerable unless stated otherwise.

    Affected products
    Affected versionsFixed in
    nrwlnx-console
    • 18.95.0
    • —
    nxnx_console
    • 18.95.0
    • —

    Vendors and products

    Weakness classes (CWE)

    • CWE-506Embedded Malicious Code

      Class

      The product contains code that appears to be malicious in nature.

      Entry at MITRE CWE-506

    Public exploit references

    Publicly reported proof-of-concepts, exploit modules and detection templates for this vulnerability. NEOSEC links to the original sources only and does not provide any exploit code.

    Public exploit references
    CISA KEV CatalogCISA Known Exploited Vulnerability (opens in a new tab)cisa.govactively exploited

    References & sources

    • github.comnrwl/nx-console/security/advisories/GHSA-c9j4-9m59-847weuvd, x_refsource_CONFIRM, pwn-watch
    • github.comnrwl/nx-console/issues/3139euvd, x_refsource_MISC
    • nx.devblog/nx-console-v18-95-0-postmortemeuvd, x_refsource_MISC
    • stepsecurity.ioblog/nx-console-vs-code-extension-compromisedeuvd, x_refsource_MISC
    • cisa.govknown-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2026-48027government-resource
    • pwn.watchpwn.watch: Nx Nx Console: Nx Console Embedded Malicious Code Vulnerabilitypwn-watch
    • NVD (NIST)NVD: CVE-2026-48027pwn-watch
    • cisa.govCISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalogpwn-watch

    Changes to this CVE

    Who changed this CVE and when: NVD (analysis, affected products, CVSS), the CVE publisher (CNA) and additional providers such as CISA (ADP).

    One NVD translation into another language is hidden.

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