Pico uses the Twig templating engine. In alpha 2, certain edge cases in how custom themes or user-contributed plugins interact with the Twig environment could lead to RCE.
Monitor the official Pico CMS GitHub repository. The transition from alpha.2 to later iterations focuses heavily on patching these discovered "exploit" vectors. Conclusion Pico 3.0.0-alpha.2 Exploit
Implement a Web Application Firewall (WAF) to filter out common directory traversal patterns ( ..%2f ). Pico uses the Twig templating engine
If an exploit can inject malicious code into a Markdown file's YAML front matter that is then rendered via an unsanitized Twig filter, the server may execute arbitrary PHP commands. The Impact: Full server compromise. 3. Insecure Plugin Hooks The transition from alpha
An attacker might attempt to bypass the content directory restrictions by using ../ sequences in the URI.
Ensure the webserver user has the absolute minimum permissions required to read the content and themes folders.
If successful, this allows an unauthorized user to read sensitive system files like /etc/passwd or the CMS's own configuration files ( config/config.yml ), which may contain API keys or secret salts. 2. Remote Code Execution (RCE) via Twig Templates