CVE-2021-33203: Path Traversal in Django

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.9 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2021-06-08 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Django before 2.2.24, 3.x before 3.1.12, and 3.2.x before 3.2.4 has a potential directory traversal via django.contrib.admindocs. Staff members could use the TemplateDetailView view to check the existence of arbitrary files. Additionally, if (and only if) the default admindocs templates have been customized by application developers to also show file contents, then not only the existence but also the file contents would have been exposed. In other words, there is directory traversal outside of the template root directories.

Affected products

Django: before 2.2.24; from 3.0.0 before 3.1.12; from 3.2.0 before 3.2.4 — fixed in 2.2.24, 3.1.12, 3.2.4
Fedoraproject Fedora: 35
Pypi Django: before 2.2.24; from 3.0 before 3.1.12; from 3.2 before 3.2.4; 1.0.1, 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, 1.1, 1.1.1 (+260) — fixed in 2.2.24, 3.1.12, 3.2.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Django 2.2.24, 3.1.12, 3.2.4; Pypi Django 2.2.24, 3.1.12, 3.2.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2021-33203 or the next vulnerability affects your stack