CVE-2025-55214: Copier's safe template has filesystem write access outside destination path
(updated )
Copier suggests that it’s safe to generate a project from a safe template, i.e. one that doesn’t use unsafe features like custom Jinja extensions which would require passing the --UNSAFE,--trust flag. As it turns out, a safe template can currently write files outside the destination path where a project shall be generated or updated. This is possible when rendering a generated directory structure whose rendered path is either a relative parent path or an absolute path. Constructing such paths is possible using Copier’s builtin pathjoin Jinja filter and its builtin _copier_conf.sep variable, which is the platform-native path separator. 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.
References
Code Behaviors & Features
Detect and mitigate CVE-2025-55214 with GitLab Dependency Scanning
Secure your software supply chain by verifying that all open source dependencies used in your projects contain no disclosed vulnerabilities. Dependency Scanning using SBOM also detects vulnerabilities from proprietary advisories that this site does not include. Learn more about Dependency Scanning using SBOM →