awesome-go.com static site generator renders README-derived content unescaped through text/template into three sink classes: stored XSS (CWE-79)

[r20z19]

awesome-go.com static site generator renders README-derived content unescaped through text/template into three sink classes: stored XSS (CWE-79)

Last saved at 2026-09-08

Asset

avelino/awesome-go — the static site generator that builds awesome-go.com (SOURCE_CODE). Affected code: main.go (template parsing and rendering), pkg/markdown/convert.go (goldmark renderer configuration), tmpl/project.tmpl.html, tmpl/category-index.tmpl.html. Audit baseline: main branch commit 2222bc3e8d6af0a969a37640909413bf259ef235 (2026-09-07, latest at audit time), Go toolchain go1.24.1, pinned dependencies goldmark v1.6.0 and goquery v1.8.1 (go.mod).

Weakness

Improper Neutralization of Input During Web Page Generation (Cross-site Scripting) (cwe-79)

Description

Version declaration: This report targets the avelino/awesome-go main @ 2222bc3e8d6af0a969a37640909413bf259ef235 (2026-09-07) repository tree; every code reference below was verified line-by-line against the actual source. The findings are code-level white-box confirmations (closed source call chain + segment-by-segment data-flow proof + generated-artifact forensics); no live-service requests were performed in this submission — see Steps To Reproduce for the one-click reproduction path. The deployment chain is taken from the in-repo .github/workflows/site-deploy.yaml (runs go run . on push to main and publishes out/ to awesome-go.com).

Summary

The awesome-go.com static site generator takes the community-PR-edited README.md as its sole content source, yet no stage of the content pipeline HTML-escapes attacker-controlled text:

1. All page templates are parsed with text/template (not html/template) — main.go:91-102 — so {{.Title}}, {{.Description}}, {{.URL}} placeholders emit raw bytes;
2. The README is rendered by goldmark with html.WithUnsafe() enabled — pkg/markdown/convert.go:24 — letting entity-encoded inline HTML pass through; the subsequent goquery extraction (extractCategory, main.go:310-356) reads title/description via .Text(), which decodes <script> back to raw < > in memory;
3. The rendered template output is additionally round-tripped through goquery parse-then-serialize (main.go:223-237, main.go:753-761), turning the raw <script> injected by text/template into a real DOM element that is faithfully serialized into the final HTML.

An attacker only needs to open a normal PR editing README.md (the standard contribution path for this repo); once merged, site-deploy.yaml regenerates and publishes the site, and the project/category pages of awesome-go.com execute attacker JavaScript against every visitor. The incomplete mitigation present in the source (project.tmpl.html:45-46 applies jsonEscape to Title/Description only inside the JSON-LD block) shows the authors are aware of the risk, while the same values remain raw in h1/p/meta attributes.

Finding A: Entity-encoded <script> becomes real elements after text/template + goquery roundtrip

Files: main.go:91-102, main.go:310-356, tmpl/project.tmpl.html:8-25,110-112, tmpl/category-index.tmpl.html:108-116

// main.go:91-102 — all page templates parsed with text/template, zero contextual escaping
var tpl = template.Must(
	template.New("").Funcs(template.FuncMap{
		"now":         func() string { return time.Now().Format("2006-01-02") },
		"jsonEscape":  func(s string) string { ... },
	}).ParseFS(tplFs, "tmpl/*.tmpl.html", "tmpl/*.tmpl.xml"),
)

Segment-by-segment:

• A README entry - [<script>alert(1)</script>](https://github.com/poc-owner/poc-repo) - <img src=x onerror=alert(2)> ... passes goldmark (html.WithUnsafe(), convert.go:24) as entity-encoded inline HTML; extractCategory (main.go:326 selLink.Text(), main.go:329 selLi.Text()) extracts via goquery .Text() — .Text() decodes HTML entities, so Link.Title / Link.Description hold raw <script>alert(1)</script> / <img src=x onerror=alert(2)> in memory;
• Those values flow through text/template into project.tmpl.html's <title> (:8), meta tags (:9-10,13,17,22-23), <h1> (:110), <p> (:111), and into category-index.tmpl.html anchor text (:111/:113 {{.Description}}) — unescaped end to end;
• The rendered output is parsed and re-serialized by goquery before being written (renderCategories main.go:223-237, renderProjects main.go:753-761): the raw <script>/<img> text injected by text/template is parsed into real element nodes and re-serialized as elements — executable in the final HTML by construction.

Generated-artifact comparison (archived local build output in workdir/evidence/cwe79/):

out/poc-xss-category/poc-repo-poc-owner-github/index.html:
  <h1><script>alert(1)</script></h1>
  <p><script>alert(1)</script> - <img src="x" onerror="alert(2)"/> ...</p>

Finding B: JSON-LD string-context escape + meta attribute escape on category pages

Files: tmpl/category-index.tmpl.html:41-70,9

<script type="application/ld+json">
{ ... "description": "{{.Description}}", ... }   <!-- :46, no jsonEscape -->
</script>

Segment-by-segment: the project.tmpl.html JSON-LD block escapes .Title/.Description with jsonEscape (:45-46,68,74), while the analogous block in category-index.tmpl.html (:41-70) interpolates raw values. A category description containing "," closes the JSON string and injects a new member: the fragment Benign","pocInjected":"jsonld-escape-confirmed turns the generated ld+json into "description": "Benign","pocInjected":"jsonld-escape-confirmed", — the injected block still parses as JSON (evidence sink2_json_parse_ok.txt: parse result true, injected member pocInjected = jsonld-escape-confirmed), letting the attacker tamper with structured metadata consumed by search engines and crawlers. The same raw value also breaks out of the <meta name="description" content="{{.Description}} ..."> attribute context (:9) (evidence benign-vs-poc-site-diff.patch).

Finding C: javascript: scheme URLs flow verbatim into the utm-suffixed href sink

Files: tmpl/category-index.tmpl.html:113, main.go:463-519

<a href="{{.URL}}?utm_campaign=awesomego&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=awesomego" rel="noopener nofollow">{{.Description}}</a>

Segment-by-segment: buildProjects (main.go:464-519) calls parseRepoURL only for github/gitlab links (:469) and continues on everything else — no scheme validation, rewriting, or blocking; a javascript: scheme in Link.URL therefore reaches the :113 href sink verbatim. The payload - [Utm Bypass Link](javascript:alert(3)//) generates:

<a href="javascript:alert(3)//?utm_campaign=awesomego&amp;utm_medium=referral&amp;utm_source=awesomego" rel="noopener nofollow">

The entry text carries the trailing //, which JS-comments out the appended utm query; a visitor click executes alert(3).

Differential vs. the developers' own partial mitigation (why the defect stands)

project.tmpl.html:45-46,68,74 uses {{jsonEscape .Title}} / {{jsonEscape .Description}} inside the JSON-LD block, producing \u003cscript\u003e... that is safe in JSON context; but the same values stay raw in h1 (:110), p (:111), <title> (:8), and meta (:9-23), and the category template never uses the helper at all. The mitigation is incomplete and discontinuous, text/template performs no HTML-context escaping, and the defect follows.

Versions Verified

Version	Template engine	goldmark config	Sink reachability
avelino/awesome-go main @ 2222bc3e8d6af0a969a37640909413bf259ef235 (2026-09-07, audited tree)	❌ text/template (main.go:91-102)	❌ html.WithUnsafe() (convert.go:24)	❌ All three sink classes reachable on project/category pages; goquery roundtrip preserves executable form

The defect is structural to the generator (template engine choice + missing escaping + entity-decoding extraction) and affects every recent build of this pipeline; no fix commit was found in the audited tree.

---

Steps To Reproduce

Pre-conditions: Attacker holds a GitHub account and can open a PR against avelino/awesome-go editing README.md (the normal community flow; no special privileges). A maintainer merges the PR; site-deploy.yaml (triggered on push to main) runs go run . in CI and publishes out/ to awesome-go.com in production mode (site-deploy.yaml:3-6,27-47). This reproduction requires no access to any online service — the steps below close logically on a local source copy as a white-box reproduction.

Step 1 — prepare the attack input. In a repo copy, replace README entries with (full PoC: workdir/poc/README.poc.md; benign twin workdir/poc/README.benign.md as the diff baseline):

- [<script>alert(1)</script>](https://github.com/poc-owner/poc-repo) - <img src=x onerror=alert(2)> entity-encoded payload
- [Benign Jsonld Link](https://github.com/poc-owner/poc-repo2) - Benign","pocInjected":"jsonld-escape-confirmed
- [Utm Bypass Link](javascript:alert(3)//) - javascript scheme payload

Step 2 — run the generator. go run . (Go 1.24.1; AWESOME_SKIP_FETCH=1 skips metadata fetching, main.go:523-525). Or run the archived script: bash workdir/repro/reproduce_cwe79.sh (stages PoC/benign twin copies and produces all forensic files below).

Step 3 — inspect generated pages (expected results).

• out/poc-xss-category/poc-repo-poc-owner-github/index.html <h1>/<p> contain real <script>alert(1)</script> and <img src="x" onerror="alert(2)"/> elements (sink1_h1.txt, sink1_project_header.txt); the category-page anchor text is likewise injected (sink1b_anchor.txt).
• out/poc-jsonld-category/index.html ld+json contains "description": "Benign","pocInjected":"jsonld-escape-confirmed",; the block parses as JSON with the injected member (sink2_jsonld_block.txt, sink2_json_parse_ok.txt: true); the same value breaks the <meta name="description" content="..."> attribute quoting.
• out/poc-utm-bypass-category/index.html anchor is href="javascript:alert(3)//?utm_campaign=...&utm_source=awesomego" (sink3_anchor.txt).

Step 4 — differential confirmation. benign-vs-poc-site-diff.patch contains only surgical diff lines at the three sink classes (the benign twin differs from the PoC input solely in the payload lines), ruling out template static-content noise; readme-pr-diff.patch is the attacker PR diff relative to the upstream README.

Step 5 — browser-semantics cross-check. Re-parse the sink1_* / sink3_anchor fragments under HTML5 browser parsing rules: <h1><script>...</script></h1> is a script execution context; a javascript: href executes on click; the escaped <meta> attribute value is re-tokenized by the browser at the attribute terminator. The archived final-run.log records all four assertions (SINK1 project / SINK1 category anchor / SINK2 ld+json / SINK3 href) as confirmed.

Actual vs. expected results: Actual — generated pages carry executable attacker markup in HTML context, and the JSON-LD structure is tampered with an injected member. Expected (secure behavior) — README-derived text should appear as character entities inside h1/p/anchor text, JSON-LD strings, and HTML attributes, producing no element or attribute breakout. The divergence is produced jointly by text/template (no escaping) + .Text() entity decoding + goquery re-serialization; the chain is closed at source level.

---

Impact

Aspect	Detail
Attack requirement	One PR editing README.md merged by a maintainer (the repo's normal community contribution flow); no in-account privileges, no special configuration
Privilege boundary	Attacker gains same-origin script execution on awesome-go.com; no server-side privileges involved — the injection lives in CI build artifacts (static HTML)
Confidentiality	Every visitor's browser executing attacker script on the affected project/category pages can read same-origin documents, localStorage, and session tokens, and exfiltrate them to attacker endpoints
Integrity	Injected JSON-LD members tamper with structured metadata consumed by search engines/crawlers (name, description, breadcrumb); page DOM fully rewriteable (phishing forms, redirects, keylogging)
Availability	Client-side only (forced redirects/loops degrade single-page experience); no server-side denial of service
Persistence	Stored/persistent: the payload lives in README.md and survives every push-to-main build until the payload lines are removed
User interaction	Sinks 1/2 execute on page load (no click); sink 3 requires a visitor click
Severity	Medium. CVSS 3.1 AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:L/I:L/A:N ≈ 5.0–5.4; given awesome-go.com's traffic and the routine nature of community PRs, real-world exposure is far above typical vulnerabilities at this score
CVE eligibility	Yes. The root cause is in the awesome-go repository itself (template engine choice and missing escaping), not previously publicly disclosed; an independently assignable new defect
Suggested submission channels	① GitHub Issue per SECURITY.md (https://github.com/avelino/awesome-go/issues/new); ② maintainer email avelinorun@gmail.com; ③ VulDB (https://vuldb.com/?submit, login required); ④ MITRE CNA-LR CVE ID Request (https://mitre.github.io/mitre-cve-roles/cve-id-request/, fallback)

Additional notes:

• Suggested fix: ① migrate main.go:91-102 from text/template to html/template (the code already imports template2 "html/template" for template.HTML, so the migration surface is contained); ② escape extractCategory .Text() results per output context before templating; ③ use jsonEscape for .Title/.Description in the category JSON-LD block; ④ add a scheme allowlist (http/https) for Link.URL at buildProjects/template level, rejecting javascript:/data: schemes.
• Relation to dependency-rooted findings: This report's root cause is in the repository's own code and is independent of the golang.org/x/net (CVE-2026-27136) and goldmark (CVE-2026-5160) findings; even with dependencies upgraded, the unescaped text/template chain stands on its own.