{"id":"CVE-2021-29474","aliases":["EUVD-2021-16082","GHSA-p528-555r-pf87"],"status":"published","title":"Relative Path Traversal Attack on note creation","description":"HedgeDoc (formerly known as CodiMD) is an open-source collaborative markdown editor. An attacker can read arbitrary `.md` files from the server's filesystem due to an improper input validation, which results in the ability to perform a relative path traversal. To verify if you are affected, you can try to open the following URL: `http://localhost:3000/..%2F..%2FREADME#` (replace `http://localhost:3000` with your instance's base-URL e.g. `https://demo.hedgedoc.org/..%2F..%2FREADME#`). If you see a README page being rendered, you run an affected version. The attack works due the fact that the internal router passes the url-encoded alias to the `noteController.showNote`-function. This function passes the input directly to findNote() utility function, that will pass it on the the parseNoteId()-function, that tries to make sense out of the noteId/alias and check if a note already exists and if so, if a corresponding file on disk was updated. If no note exists the note creation-function is called, which pass this unvalidated alias, with a `.md` appended, into a path.join()-function which is read from the filesystem in the follow up routine and provides the pre-filled content of the new note. This allows an attacker to not only read arbitrary `.md` files from the filesystem, but also observes changes to them. The usefulness of this attack can be considered limited, since mainly markdown files are use the file-ending `.md` and all markdown files contained in the hedgedoc project, like the README, are public anyway. If other protections such as a chroot or container or proper file permissions are in place, this attack's usefulness is rather limited. On a reverse-proxy level one can force a URL-decode, which will prevent this attack because the router will not accept such a path.","severity":{"version":"3.1","score":4.7,"vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N","level":"medium","assessor":"cna","from":"cve"},"epss":{"day":"2026-11-09","score":0.01599,"percentile":0.7595,"model":"v2026.06.15"},"facts":{"in_kev":false,"known_exploited":false,"public_exploit":false,"fix_available":false},"cwes":["CWE-20","CWE-22"],"published":"2021-04-26T21:37:29Z","modified":"2026-10-20T10:54:37Z","products":[{"vendor":"hedgedoc","product":"hedgedoc"}],"references":[{"url":"https://github.com/hedgedoc/hedgedoc/security/advisories/GHSA-p528-555r-pf87","tags":["x_refsource_CONFIRM","x_transferred","Exploit","Patch","Third Party Advisory","fix"]}],"sources":{"cve":[{"id":"CVE-2021-29474","title":"Relative Path Traversal Attack on note creation","description":"HedgeDoc (formerly known as CodiMD) is an open-source collaborative markdown editor. An attacker can read arbitrary `.md` files from the server's filesystem due to an improper input validation, which results in the ability to perform a relative path traversal. To verify if you are affected, you can try to open the following URL: `http://localhost:3000/..%2F..%2FREADME#` (replace `http://localhost:3000` with your instance's base-URL e.g. `https://demo.hedgedoc.org/..%2F..%2FREADME#`). If you see a README page being rendered, you run an affected version. The attack works due the fact that the internal router passes the url-encoded alias to the `noteController.showNote`-function. This function passes the input directly to findNote() utility function, that will pass it on the the parseNoteId()-function, that tries to make sense out of the noteId/alias and check if a note already exists and if so, if a corresponding file on disk was updated. If no note exists the note creation-function is called, which pass this unvalidated alias, with a `.md` appended, into a path.join()-function which is read from the filesystem in the follow up routine and provides the pre-filled content of the new note. This allows an attacker to not only read arbitrary `.md` files from the filesystem, but also observes changes to them. The usefulness of this attack can be considered limited, since mainly markdown files are use the file-ending `.md` and all markdown files contained in the hedgedoc project, like the README, are public anyway. If other protections such as a chroot or container or proper file permissions are in place, this attack's usefulness is rather limited. On a reverse-proxy level one can force a URL-decode, which will prevent this attack because the router will not accept such a path.","status":"published","published":"2021-04-26T21:37:29Z","modified":"2024-08-03T22:11:05.268Z","cvss":[{"version":"3.1","score":4.7,"vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N","level":"medium","assessor":"cna"}],"cwes":["CWE-20","CWE-22"],"updated_at":"2026-11-02T14:33:06.658806Z"}],"euvd":[{"id":"EUVD-2021-16082","description":"HedgeDoc (formerly known as CodiMD) is an open-source collaborative markdown editor. An attacker can read arbitrary `.md` files from the server's filesystem due to an improper input validation, which results in the ability to perform a relative path traversal. To verify if you are affected, you can try to open the following URL: `http://localhost:3000/..%2F..%2FREADME#` (replace `http://localhost:3000` with your instance's base-URL e.g. `https://demo.hedgedoc.org/..%2F..%2FREADME#`). If you see a README page being rendered, you run an affected version. The attack works due the fact that the internal router passes the url-encoded alias to the `noteController.showNote`-function. This function passes the input directly to findNote() utility function, that will pass it on the the parseNoteId()-function, that tries to make sense out of the noteId/alias and check if a note already exists and if so, if a corresponding file on disk was updated. If no note exists the note creation-function is called, which pass this unvalidated alias, with a `.md` appended, into a path.join()-function which is read from the filesystem in the follow up routine and provides the pre-filled content of the new note. This allows an attacker to not only read arbitrary `.md` files from the filesystem, but also observes changes to them. The usefulness of this attack can be considered limited, since mainly markdown files are use the file-ending `.md` and all markdown files contained in the hedgedoc project, like the README, are public anyway. If other protections such as a chroot or container or proper file permissions are in place, this attack's usefulness is rather limited. On a reverse-proxy level one can force a URL-decode, which will prevent this attack because the router will not accept such a path.","status":"published","published":"2021-04-26T21:37:29Z","modified":"2024-08-03T22:11:05Z","cvss":[{"version":"3.1","score":4.7,"vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N","level":"medium"}],"updated_at":"2026-11-03T03:24:44.540278Z"}],"nvd":[{"id":"CVE-2021-29474","description":"HedgeDoc (formerly known as CodiMD) is an open-source collaborative markdown editor. An attacker can read arbitrary `.md` files from the server's filesystem due to an improper input validation, which results in the ability to perform a relative path traversal. To verify if you are affected, you can try to open the following URL: `http://localhost:3000/..%2F..%2FREADME#` (replace `http://localhost:3000` with your instance's base-URL e.g. `https://demo.hedgedoc.org/..%2F..%2FREADME#`). If you see a README page being rendered, you run an affected version. The attack works due the fact that the internal router passes the url-encoded alias to the `noteController.showNote`-function. This function passes the input directly to findNote() utility function, that will pass it on the the parseNoteId()-function, that tries to make sense out of the noteId/alias and check if a note already exists and if so, if a corresponding file on disk was updated. If no note exists the note creation-function is called, which pass this unvalidated alias, with a `.md` appended, into a path.join()-function which is read from the filesystem in the follow up routine and provides the pre-filled content of the new note. This allows an attacker to not only read arbitrary `.md` files from the filesystem, but also observes changes to them. The usefulness of this attack can be considered limited, since mainly markdown files are use the file-ending `.md` and all markdown files contained in the hedgedoc project, like the README, are public anyway. If other protections such as a chroot or container or proper file permissions are in place, this attack's usefulness is rather limited. On a reverse-proxy level one can force a URL-decode, which will prevent this attack because the router will not accept such a path.","status":"published","published":"2021-04-26T22:15:08.9Z","modified":"2026-06-17T03:47:42.95Z","cvss":[{"version":"3.1","score":4.7,"vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N","level":"medium","assessor":"secondary"},{"version":"3.1","score":5.8,"vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N","level":"medium","assessor":"primary"},{"version":"2.0","score":5,"vector":"AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N","level":"medium","assessor":"primary"}],"cwes":["CWE-20","CWE-22"],"updated_at":"2026-11-02T14:06:52.81233Z"}],"osv":[{"id":"CVE-2021-29474","description":"HedgeDoc (formerly known as CodiMD) is an open-source collaborative markdown editor. An attacker can read arbitrary `.md` files from the server's filesystem due to an improper input validation, which results in the ability to perform a relative path traversal. To verify if you are affected, you can try to open the following URL: `http://localhost:3000/..%2F..%2FREADME#` (replace `http://localhost:3000` with your instance's base-URL e.g. `https://demo.hedgedoc.org/..%2F..%2FREADME#`). If you see a README page being rendered, you run an affected version. The attack works due the fact that the internal router passes the url-encoded alias to the `noteController.showNote`-function. This function passes the input directly to findNote() utility function, that will pass it on the the parseNoteId()-function, that tries to make sense out of the noteId/alias and check if a note already exists and if so, if a corresponding file on disk was updated. If no note exists the note creation-function is called, which pass this unvalidated alias, with a `.md` appended, into a path.join()-function which is read from the filesystem in the follow up routine and provides the pre-filled content of the new note. This allows an attacker to not only read arbitrary `.md` files from the filesystem, but also observes changes to them. The usefulness of this attack can be considered limited, since mainly markdown files are use the file-ending `.md` and all markdown files contained in the hedgedoc project, like the README, are public anyway. If other protections such as a chroot or container or proper file permissions are in place, this attack's usefulness is rather limited. On a reverse-proxy level one can force a URL-decode, which will prevent this attack because the router will not accept such a path.","status":"published","published":"2021-04-26T22:15:08.9Z","modified":"2026-10-20T10:54:37.157170242Z","cvss":[{"version":"3.1","score":5.8,"vector":"CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:L/I:N/A:N","level":"medium"}],"updated_at":"2026-11-02T15:44:19.129331Z"}]}}