Nuclei
CVE-2023-37896
HIGH
Vulnerability Assessment
| Weakness |
CWE
OWASP Top 10:2025
A01:2025 - Broken Access Control
ASVS 5.0
V5 - File Handling Path canonicalization, traversal prevention
MITRE ATT&CK
2 techniques across 2 tactics: Discovery, Collection The technique list with ATT&CK links and the kill-chain view is part of the Basic plan and up. |
| Impact | CVSS score of 7.5 (HIGH). Attack characteristics: network attack vector, low complexity, no privileges required, no user interaction not required. |
| Exploit ScenarioDerived | A remote attacker could access files and directories outside the intended path by sending crafted requests to the affected application. No authentication is required to exploit this vulnerability. |
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Alert meAnalysisAI
Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.5), this vulnerability is remotely exploitable, no authentication required, low attack complexity. No vendor patch available.
RemediationAI
No vendor patch is available at time of analysis. Monitor vendor advisories for updates. Validate and canonicalize file paths. Use chroot or sandboxing. Reject input containing path separators or '../' sequences.
Affected Packages
Source: OSV (Open Source Vulnerabilities)
Affects your stack
Affects 2 packages in go
Checking this CVE against your own stacks and servers is part of the Basic plan and up.
Technical ContextAI · show details
This vulnerability is classified as Path Traversal (CWE-22), which allows attackers to access files and directories outside the intended path. Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner. Prior to version 2.9.9, a security issue in the Nuclei project affected users utilizing Nuclei as Go code (SDK) running custom templates. This issue did not affect CLI users. The problem was related to sanitization issues with payload loading in sandbox mode. There was a potential risk with payloads loading in sandbox mode. The issue occurred due to relative paths not being converted to absolute paths before doing the check for sandbox flag allowing arbitrary files to be read on the filesystem in certain cases when using Nuclei from Go SDK implementation. This issue has been fixed in version 2.9.9. The maintainers have also enabled sandbox by default for filesystem loading. This can be optionally disabled if required. The -sandbox option has been deprecated and is now divided into two new options: -lfa (allow local file access) which is enabled by default and -lna (restrict local network access) which can be enabled by users optionally. The -lfa allows file (payload) access anywhere on the system (disabling sandbox effectively), and -lna blocks connections to the local/private network. Affected products include: Projectdiscovery Nuclei. Version information: version 2.9.9.
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Severity by source
AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Primary rating from NVD · only source for this CVE.
CVSS VectorNVD
DescriptionNVD
Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner. Prior to version 2.9.9, a security issue in the Nuclei project affected users utilizing Nuclei as Go code (SDK) running custom templates. This issue did not affect CLI users. The problem was related to sanitization issues with payload loading in sandbox mode. There was a potential risk with payloads loading in sandbox mode. The issue occurred due to relative paths not being converted to absolute paths before doing the check for sandbox flag allowing arbitrary files to be read on the filesystem in certain cases when using Nuclei from Go SDK implementation.
This issue has been fixed in version 2.9.9. The maintainers have also enabled sandbox by default for filesystem loading. This can be optionally disabled if required. The -sandbox option has been deprecated and is now divided into two new options: -lfa (allow local file access) which is enabled by default and -lna (restrict local network access) which can be enabled by users optionally. The -lfa allows file (payload) access anywhere on the system (disabling sandbox effectively), and -lna blocks connections to the local/private network.
Threat Intelligence Overview
NVD
CVE.org
EPSS
GitHub
How this decision was reached
The engine reads each signal below and applies a fixed list of rules from top to bottom. The first rule that matches sets the recommended action – like a statement, every line is shown.
What every action level means
SSVC AssessmentENISA
Priority Score
Attack Technique
Path traversal exploits occur when applications use user-controlled input to construct file system paths without proper validation.
Affected Products (CPE)NVD
Nuclei is a vulnerability scanner powered by YAML based templates. Rated high severity (CVSS 7.8), this vulnerability is
DSL expression injection in ProjectDiscovery Nuclei before 3.8.0 allows remote code execution when using the -env-vars f
projectdiscovery/nuclei is a fast and customisable vulnerability scanner based on simple YAML based DSL. Rated high seve
Local attackers with write access to Nuclei's on-disk template storage can bypass template signature verification and ca
Local file disclosure in ProjectDiscovery Nuclei 3.0.0 through 3.9.x lets an untrusted, unsigned workflow template read
Sensitive environment-variable disclosure in ProjectDiscovery Nuclei (versions 3.0.0 through anything before 3.10.0) all
Local file disclosure in ProjectDiscovery Nuclei 3.0.0 through 3.9.x lets an attacker-controlled MySQL-compatible endpoi
Arbitrary shell command execution is possible in ProjectDiscovery Nuclei versions 3.0.0 through 3.9.x when DAST mode (-d
Exploit-DB