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OpenAdvisories
Medium · 6.8 Public exploit CVE-2021-21353 EUVD-2021-0685GHSA-p493-635q-r6gr

Remote code execution in pug

Published Mar 3, 2021 · Updated Nov 2, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

Pug is an npm package which is a high-performance template engine. In pug before version 3.0.1, if a remote attacker was able to control the `pretty` option of the pug compiler, e.g. if you spread a user provided object such as the query parameters of a request into the pug template inputs, it was possible for them to achieve remote code execution on the node.js backend. This is fixed in version 3.0.1. This advisory applies to multiple pug packages including "pug", "pug-code-gen". pug-code-gen has a backported fix at version 2.0.3. This advisory is not exploitable if there is no way for un-trusted input to be passed to pug as the `pretty` option, e.g. if you compile templates in advance before applying user input to them, you do not need to upgrade.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
pugjs pug < 3.0.1 —

Public exploits

Exploit or proof-of-concept code for this vulnerability is publicly available, which lowers the bar for attackers. Treat it as a reason to patch sooner.

Third-party code, not reviewed by us. Public PoCs are sometimes fake or contain malware. Read the code first and run it only in an isolated lab, against systems you are authorised to test.

GitHub 1 repository

Sources: PoC-in-GitHub, Metasploit Framework, Exploit-DB — updated daily. Only links are listed; no exploit code is hosted here.

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
npm pug < 3.0.1 3.0.1 GHSA-p493-635q-r6gr
npm pug-code-gen < 2.0.3 2.0.3 GHSA-p493-635q-r6gr
npm pug-code-gen >= 3.0.0, < 3.0.2 3.0.2 GHSA-p493-635q-r6gr

References