Any file can be included with the pymdown-snippets extension
Date: 2023-05
Affected: pip/pymdown-extensions
Attack vector: path-traversal
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: High
CVE: CVE-2023-32309
CWE: CWE-22
CVSS: 7.5 (CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N)

### Summary Arbitrary file read when using include file syntax. ### Details By using the syntax `--8<--"/etc/passwd"` or `--8<--"/proc/self/environ"` the content of these files will be rendered in the generated documentation. Additionally, a path relative to a specified, allowed base path can also be used to render the content of a file outside the specified base paths: `--8<-- "../../../../etc/passwd"`. Within the Snippets extension, there exists a `base_path` option but the implementation is vulnerable to Directory Traversal. The vulnerable section exists in `get_snippet_path(self, path)` lines 155 to 174 in snippets.py. ``` base = "docs" path = "/etc/passwd" filename = os.path.join(base,path) # Filename is now /etc/passwd ``` ### PoC ```py import markdown payload = "--8<-- \"/etc/passwd\"" html = markdown.markdown(payload, extensions=['pymdownx.snippets']) print(html) ``` ### Impact Any readable file on the host where the plugin is executing may have its content exposed. This can impact any use of Snippets that exposes the use of Snippets to external users. It is never recommended to use Snippets to process user-facing, dynamic content. It is designed to process known content on the backend under the control of the host, but if someone were to accidentally enable it for user-facing content, undesired information could be exposed. ### Suggestion Specified snippets should be restricted to the configured, specified base paths as a safe default. Allowing relativ


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):