Backstage is an open framework for building developer portals, and @backstage/plugin-techdocs-node provides common node.js functionalities for TechDocs. In versions of @backstage/plugin-techdocs-node prior to 1.13.11 and 1.14.1, a path traversal vulnerability in the TechDocs local generator allows attackers to read arbitrary files from the host filesystem when Backstage is configured with `techdocs.generator.runIn: local`. When processing documentation from untrusted sources, symlinks within the docs directory are followed by MkDocs during the build process.
File contents are embedded into generated HTML and exposed to users who can view the documentation. This vulnerability is fixed in` @backstage/plugin-techdocs-node` versions 1.13.11 and 1.14.1. Some workarounds are available.
Switch to `runIn: docker` in `app-config.yaml` and/or restrict write access to TechDocs source repositories to trusted users only.
Attack Parameters
Impact Assessment
CVSS Vector v3.1