Automatic exploit generation for Node.js applications.
When building Explode-js from source, it is recommended that you first ensure the following:
$ opam init
$ opam switch create 5.3.0 5.3.0
Setup a managed Python environment using either direnv or virtualenv.
Install neo4j. For ubuntu you can follow the instructions below:
# Download Neo4j GPG key and add it to apt
$ wget -O - https://debian.neo4j.com/neotechnology.gpg.key | apt-key add -
# Add Neo4j APT repository
$ echo 'deb https://debian.neo4j.com stable 5' | tee -a /etc/apt/sources.list.d/neo4j.list
# Update package list and install neo4j 5.26.4
$ apt-get update && apt-get install -y neo4j=1:5.26.4 && \
# Disable authentication for Neo4j (not recommended for production)
echo dbms.security.auth_enabled=false >> /etc/neo4j/neo4j.conf
# Set correct ownership for Neo4j data and log directories
$ chown -R neo4j:neo4j /var/lib/neo4j && \
chown -R neo4j:neo4j /var/log/neo4j
# Set group read/write permissions on data and log directories
$ chmod -R g+rw /var/lib/neo4j && \
chmod -R g+rw /var/log/neo4j
# Add your user to the neo4j group (don't run Neo4j as root)
$ usermod -aG neo4j <YOUR USER>
# Reboot or run to login into the neo4j group
$ newgrp neo4j
Then, you can proceed with the installation of Explode-js:
setup.ml script:$ git clone https://github.com/formalsec/explode-js.git
# Use the latest stable release
$ git checkout v1.3.2
$ cd explode-js
$ git submodule update --init
$ ./setup.ml
$ dune runtest
For examples on how to run explode-js in different settings, see examples.
For benchmarking and evaluation see bench
“Automated Exploit Generation for Node.js Packages”, in Proceedings of the 46th ACM SIGPLAN Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI’25), 2025.
See LICENSE.
MIT License
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