Gohugoio Hugo up to 0.164.x Symlink os.ReadFile path traversal

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability categorized as problematic has been discovered in Gohugoio Hugo up to 0.164.x. Affected by this vulnerability is the function os.ReadFile of the component Symlink. Executing a manipulation can lead to path traversal. The identification of this vulnerability is CVE-2026-89258. The attack may be launched remotely. There is no exploit available. It is advisable to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Gohugoio Hugo up to 0.164.x. It has been declared as problematic. This vulnerability affects the function os.ReadFile of the component Symlink. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a path traversal vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-22. The product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality. CVE summarizes:

Hugo is a static site generator. In versions after v0.123.0 and before v0.165.0, symlinks in parent directories were not dropped during direct resource lookups, allowing path confinement to be bypassed. An attacker who can place — or who convinces a site author to place — a symlink inside a mounted directory (for example, in a locally vendored theme under themes/) can cause functions that perform direct lookups, such as resources.Get and os.ReadFile, to follow that symlink and read files outside the intended project boundaries, disclosing their contents in the built site. Themes mounted as Go modules fetched from GitHub have symlinks stripped on download and are not affected, and multi-directory walks (e.g. content/asset walking) are not affected. This issue is an incomplete-fix follow-up to GHSA-c3wq-j5vh-68rc and GHSA-fw87-fv5r-9fpw; it is fixed in v0.165.0.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-89258 since 09/11/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. The attack can be initiated remotely. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1006.

Upgrading to version 0.165.0 eliminates this vulnerability.

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Productinfo

Vendor

• Gohugoio

Name

• Hugo

Version

• 0.164

Website

• Product: https://github.com/gohugoio/hugo/

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