🛡️ CVE-2023-24538 — go

🔴 CVSS 9.8 — Critical ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-94 NVD
9.8
CVSS Score
0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

Backticks not treated as string delimiters in html/template

Templates do not properly consider backticks (`) as Javascript string delimiters, and do not escape them as expected.

Backticks are used, since ES6, for JS template literals. If a template contains a Go template action within a Javascript template literal, the contents of the action can be used to terminate the literal, injecting arbitrary Javascript code into the Go template.

As ES6 template literals are rather complex, and themselves can do string interpolation, the decision was made to simply disallow Go template actions from being used inside of them (e.g. "var a = {{.}}"), since there is no obviously safe way to allow this behavior. This takes the same approach as github.com/google/safehtml.

With fix, Template.Parse returns an Error when it encounters templates like this, with an ErrorCode of value 12. This ErrorCode is currently unexported, but will be exported in the release of Go 1.21.

Users who rely on the previous behavior can re-enable it using the GODEBUG flag jstmpllitinterp=1, with the caveat that backticks will now be escaped. This should be used with caution.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached over the network, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity high, availability high.

Weakness class

CVE-2023-24538 is classified as CWE-94: Code Injection. Input is incorporated into code that the runtime evaluates, so an attacker can have their own code executed.

Affected software

CVE-2023-24538 is recorded against 3 packages.

  • go (from 1.20.0 up to 1.20.3)
  • golang
  • stdlib

Timeline and source

Published on 6 April 2023 and last revised on 17 June 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. A vendor advisory or fix has been published. Record sourced from NVD.

References

go.dev
go.dev
groups.google.com
pkg.go.dev
security.gentoo.org
go.dev
go.dev
groups.google.com
pkg.go.dev
security.gentoo.org
security.netapp.com

CVE-2023-24538 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Details

Severity CRITICAL
CVSS Score 9.8
CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CWE CWE-94
Public Exploit ✅ No
Source NVD
Published 2023-04-06
Updated 2026-08-12
Modified 2026-06-17

Affected Packages

Software From version Fixed in
go 1.20.0 1.20.3
golang — —
stdlib — —

Exploit Protection

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CVE-2023-24538 carries CVSS 9.8 Critical rating. BotEraser checks your installation against this and other known CVE records, and blocks IPs associated with exploit activity.

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