CVE-2026-89258: gohugoio hugo Link Following

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-89258 is a critical (CVSS 9.3) Link Following vulnerability in gohugoio hugo. EPSS estimates a 0.47% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 39.3% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 11-09-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 11-09-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

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.

• CWE-59Improper Link Resolution Before File Access ('Link Following')The product attempts to access a file based on the filename, but it does not properly prevent that filename from identifying a link or shortcut that resolves to an unintended resource.