CVE-2025-68278: Tinacms Tinacms Is Vulnerable To Arbitrary Vulnerability

{
  "schema_version" : "1.4.0",
  "id" : "GHSA-529f-9qwm-9628",
  "modified" : "2025-12-18T18:45:41Z",
  "published" : "2025-12-18T18:45:41Z",
  "aliases" : [ "CVE-2025-68278" ],
  "summary" : "tinacms is vulnerable to arbitrary code execution",
  "details" : "### Summary\n```tinacms``` uses the ```gray-matter``` package in an insecure way allowing attackers that can control the content of the processed markdown files, e.g., blog posts, to execute arbitrary code.\n\n### Details\nThe ```gray-matter``` package executes by default the code in the markdown file's front matter. ```tinacms``` does not change this behavior when process markdown file, e.g., by passing a custom engine property for js/javascript in the options object.\n\n### PoC\n1. Create a tinacms app using the cli/documentation: \n```\nnpx create-tina-app@latest\n```\n2. Modify one of the blog posts to contain the following front matter:\n```js\n---js\n{\n  \"title\": \"Pawned\" + console.log(require(\"fs\").readFileSync(\"/etc/passwd\").toString())\n}\n---\n```\n3. Start the tinacms server, e.g., with ```npm run dev```\n4. Observe the console of the server printing the password file, showing that attackers can execute arbitrary commands. \n\n### Impact\nRCE: attackers can execute arbitrary JavaScript code on the server hosting tinacms.\n\n### Feasibility\nPotential attack scenarios can be executed like this: Companies often have technical writers as contractors. These contractors produce md files, which they send over email or upload in a shared cloud folder. Developers download these files and upload them in ```tinacms```'s content folder. While this example might appear speculative or contrived, a general observation is that developers would be very surprised to find out that processing untrusted markdown files via ```tinacms``` = server-side code execution = complete machine take over. That is, ```tinacms``` users might not expect markdown files to contain anything else than data and ```gray-matter``` violates that assumption.",
  "severity" : [ {
    "type" : "CVSS_V4",
    "score" : "CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:P/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P"
  } ],
  "affected" : [ {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "tinacms"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "3.1.1"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "@tinacms/cli"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "2.0.4"
      } ]
    } ]
  }, {
    "package" : {
      "ecosystem" : "npm",
      "name" : "@tinacms/graphql"
    },
    "ranges" : [ {
      "type" : "ECOSYSTEM",
      "events" : [ {
        "introduced" : "0"
      }, {
        "fixed" : "2.0.3"
      } ]
    } ]
  } ],
  "references" : [ {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/tinacms/tinacms/security/advisories/GHSA-529f-9qwm-9628"
  }, {
    "type" : "ADVISORY",
    "url" : "https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2025-68278"
  }, {
    "type" : "WEB",
    "url" : "https://github.com/tinacms/tinacms/commit/fa7c27abef968e3f3a3e7d564f282bc566087569"
  }, {
    "type" : "PACKAGE",
    "url" : "https://github.com/tinacms/tinacms"
  } ],
  "database_specific" : {
    "cwe_ids" : [ "CWE-94" ],
    "severity" : "HIGH",
    "github_reviewed" : true,
    "github_reviewed_at" : "2025-12-18T18:45:41Z",
    "nvd_published_at" : "2025-12-18T16:15:57Z"
  }
}