GitHub Advisoryadvisory · Go
GHSA-c3wq-j5vh-68rc Hugo: Symlink confinement bypass in os.ReadFile
MEDIUM
Official page ↗
- Ecosystem
- Go
- Packages
- github.com/gohugoio/hugo
- Severity
- Moderate
- CVSS vector
- CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:N/SA:N
- Weaknesses
- CWE-59
- Reviewed
- 2026-06-19
Affected packages
• Go github.com/gohugoio/hugo: >= 0.123.0, < 0.163.1 → fixed in 0.163.1
Description
Affected versions: v0.123.0 through v0.163.0. Earlier versions are not affected.
Fixed in: v0.163.1.
Severity: Medium. Requires the attacker to be able to place (or convince a site author to place) a symlink inside a mounted directory — for example, inside a locally-vendored theme under `themes/`. Themes mounted as Go modules from GitHub have symlinks stripped on download and are not affected. Multi-directory walks (e.g. content/asset walking) were not affected either; only direct lookups via `resources.Get` followed symlinks.
Description. Hugo's virtual filesystem is designed so that files under a mount cannot reach outside the mount tree. A regression introduced in v0.123.0 caused `RootMappingFs.statRoot` to call `Stat` (which follows symlinks) instead of `Lstat`, so a direct `os.ReadFile "somefile"` where `somefile` was a symlink pointing outside the mount would return the target's contents. This effectively let a symlink planted inside a theme or local mount read arbitrary files reachable to the user running `hugo`.
Related
Weakness · CWE (1)
- CWE-59 Improper Link Resolution Before File Access weakness