CVE-2026-33940

Medium

Elevated severity or exploit probability.

CVSS base

8.1 HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

EPSS — probability of exploitation (30 days)

0.7%

51.5th percentile

CISA KEV

Not listed

Weakness / dates

CWE-94

Published 2026-03-27 · modified 2026-09-04

CVSS breakdown

CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector	N	Network
Attack Complexity	H	High
Privileges Required	N	None
User Interaction	N	None
Scope	U	Unchanged
Confidentiality	H	High
Integrity	H	High
Availability	H	High

Timeline

2026-03-27 — Published (NVD)
2026-09-04 — Last modified (NVD)

Description

Handlebars provides the power necessary to let users build semantic templates. In versions 4.0.0 through 4.7.8, a crafted object placed in the template context can bypass all conditional guards in `resolvePartial()` and cause `invokePartial()` to return `undefined`. The Handlebars runtime then treats the unresolved partial as a source that needs to be compiled, passing the crafted object to `env.compile()`. Because the object is a valid Handlebars AST containing injected code, the generated JavaScript executes arbitrary commands on the server. The attack requires the adversary to control a value that can be returned by a dynamic partial lookup. Version 4.7.9 fixes the issue. Some workarounds are available. First, use the runtime-only build (`require('handlebars/runtime')`). Without `compile()`, the fallback compilation path in `invokePartial` is unreachable. Second, sanitize context data before rendering: Ensure no value in the context is a non-primitive object that could be passed to a dynamic partial. Third, avoid dynamic partial lookups (`{{> (lookup ...)}}`) when context data is user-controlled.

Affected

handlebarsjs

References

Official: NVD · CVE.org