GHSA-rjwr-m7qx-3fjr oapi-codegen: OpenAPI Server Description Escapes Generated Go Comment and Injects Executable Code

Summary

The vulnerability in oapi-codegen seems to be similar with CVE-2026-22785, which is a generated-code injection issue where untrusted OpenAPI summary text is embedded into generated TypeScript MCP server source without proper escaping. oapi-codegen has a similar vulnerability in its server URL generator: untrusted OpenAPI servers[].description text is inserted into a generated Go line comment without normalizing embedded newlines. A crafted description can break out of the comment, add imports through goimports, and emit executable Go declarations into the generated package.

> [!NOTE] > A vulnerability like this requires that it is missed in code review and that you then call the malicious method. > > Using an init() function could be enough to not require a direct call to the code, and instead rely on you importing the package, but either way, code review should be performed before any oapi-codegen generated code is executed. > > We strongly recommend all users to be reviewing changes to their generated code before they execute anything within it, to protect against supply chain attacks or malicious injected code. > > This is also why we recommend oapi-codegen generated code is committed to source control.

Details

The vulnerable sink is in pkg/codegen/templates/server-urls.tmpl.

// {{ .GoName }} defines the Server URL for {{ if len .OAPISchema.Description }}{{ .OAPISchema.Description }}{{ else }}{{ .OAPISchema.URL }}{{ end }}
const {{ .GoName}} = "{{ .OAPISchema.URL }}"

This template assumes the OpenAPI server description remains inside a single Go line comment. However, OpenAPI descriptions are attacker-controlled strings and may contain newlines. Once a newline is present, the next line is no longer part of the comment.

The same raw description is also used in the function form of server URL generation:

// New{{ .GoName }} constructs the Server URL for {{ .OAPISchema.Description }}, with the provided variables.
func New{{ .GoName }}({{ .NewServerFunctionParams }}) (string, error) {

Identifier generation does not protect this sink. In pkg/codegen/server_urls.go, the description is normalized only for the generated Go identifier:

suffix := server.Description
if suffix == "" {
	suffix = nameNormalizer(server.URL)
}
name = serverURLPrefix + UppercaseFirstCharacter(suffix)
name = nameNormalizer(name)

The identifier is sanitized, but the raw server.Description is still rendered in the comment template. This leaves the code-generation context vulnerable.

The generated file is then formatted with goimports in pkg/codegen/codegen.go:

goCode := SanitizeCode(buf.String())

outBytes, err := imports.Process(opts.PackageName+".go", []byte(goCode), nil)

SanitizeCode only removes byte-order marks:

func SanitizeCode(goCode string) string {
	return strings.ReplaceAll(goCode, "\uFEFF", "")
}

It does not escape comments, replace newlines, or otherwise serialize untrusted text for a Go source-code context. As a result, attacker-controlled source can be preserved and formatted as valid Go.

How to Reproduce

The attacker-controlled input is an OpenAPI document whose servers[].description contains a newline followed by Go declarations:

openapi: "3.0.0"
info:
  title: oapi-codegen server URL description injection
  version: "1.0.0"
servers:
  - url: https://api.example.com
    description: |
      benign
      var _ = func() int {
          panic("oapi-codegen generated-code execution")
          return 0
      }()
      //
paths: {}

Generate Go source with server URL generation enabled. No special local path or helper file is required for the vulnerability; the malicious description is copied into the generated source-code context.

The generated source contains attacker-controlled executable code:

// ServerUrlBenignvarFuncIntPanicOapiCodegenGeneratedCodeExecutionReturn0 defines the Server URL for benign
var _ = func() int {
	panic("oapi-codegen generated-code execution")
	return 0
}()

//

const ServerUrlBenignvarFuncIntPanicOapiCodegenGeneratedCodeExecutionReturn0 = "https://api.example.com"

Impact

An attacker who can supply or influence an OpenAPI document consumed by oapi-codegen can inject arbitrary Go source into the generated package. In common API-client/server generation workflows, this can lead to build-time or runtime code execution in developer machines, CI systems, or downstream applications that trust generated code.