Craft CMS has Twig Function Blocklist Bypass

Description

Craft CMS implements a blocklist to prevent potentially dangerous PHP functions from being called via Twig non-Closure arrow functions.

In order to be able to successfully execute this attack, you need to either have allowAdminChanges enabled on production, or a compromised admin account, or an account with access to the System Messages utility.

Several PHP functions are not included in the blocklist, which could allow malicious actors with the required permissions to execute various types of payloads, including RCEs, arbitrary file reads, SSRFs, and SSTIs.

Twig has already deprecated this behavior, and it will eventually be removed from Twig altogether.

https://github.com/twigphp/Twig/blob/946ddeafa3c9f4ce279d1f34051af041db0e16f2/src/Extension/CoreExtension.php#L2096

This has been resolved in Craft 4.17.0 and 5.9.0, which removes the blocklist and disables all non-Clousure arrow functions in Twig globally via the enableTwigSandbox config setting. That setting is enabled by default on all new Craft projects. Existing Craft projects will need to enable the config setting to take advantage of it.

Existing projects should update to the patched versions of 5.9.0 and 4.17.0 to mitigate the issue and enable the config setting.

Resources

https://github.com/craftcms/cms/pull/18208

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
Open advisory ↗
Repository advisory
Open repository advisory ↗
Source code
Browse source ↗
Published (advisory)
2026-03-03 21:01:27 UTC
Updated
2026-03-04 18:39:18 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2026-03-03 21:01:27 UTC
NVD published
2026-03-04

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.10% 27.07%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
6.1 4.0
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:H/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:N)
Could be attacked over the internet or any normal routed network.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Exploitation conditions are straightforward and stable.
Attack requirements (AT:N)
No additional preconditions are required beyond normal reachability.
Privileges required (PR:H)
High privileges are required.
User interaction (UI:N)
No user interaction is required.
Vulnerable system confidentiality impact (VC:H)
High confidentiality impact on the vulnerable system.
Vulnerable system integrity impact (VI:H)
High integrity impact on the vulnerable system.
Vulnerable system availability impact (VA:H)
High availability impact on the vulnerable system.
Subsequent system confidentiality impact (SC:N)
No confidentiality impact on subsequent systems.
Subsequent system integrity impact (SI:N)
No integrity impact on subsequent systems.
Subsequent system availability impact (SA:N)
No availability impact on subsequent systems.
Exploit maturity (threat) (E:U)
Unreported: no public PoC, no reported exploitation, and no known simplification tools.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-94 Improper Control of Generation of Code ('Code Injection')
CWE-184 Incomplete List of Disallowed Inputs
CWE-1336 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements Used in a Template Engine

Credits

  • mHe4am (reporter)

Affected packages (2)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
composer craftcms/cms >= 5.0.0-RC1, < 5.9.0-beta.1 5.9.0-beta.1
composer craftcms/cms >= 4.0.0-RC1, < 4.17.0-beta.1 4.17.0-beta.1

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence