GHSA-g27h-8qhm-6pff

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    GHSA-g27h-8qhm-6pff

    Published: 7 Oct 2026Last Modified: 5 Nov 2026

    Summary: Excelize: Panic in cellInRange on a worksheet with an empty mergeCell ref

    Details: ### Summary A worksheet containing `<mergeCell ref=""/>` makes `mergeCellsParser` leave the cached rectangle empty, and `cellInRange` then indexes that empty slice without a length check. Every non-streaming cell API panics with `index out of range [0] with length 0` on the first cell read after opening the file. ### Where it is `cell.go`, `cellInRange` func cellInRange(cell, ref []int) bool { return cell[0] >= ref[0] && cell[0] <= ref[2] && cell[1] >= ref[1] && cell[1] <= ref[3] } `ref` is indexed at four positions with no bounds check. The caller that can hand it an empty slice, `mergeCellsParser` if ref := ws.MergeCells.Cells[i].Ref; len(ws.MergeCells.Cells[i].rect) == 0 && ref != "" { if strings.Count(ref, ":") != 1 { ref += ":" + ref } rect, err := rangeRefToCoordinates(ref) if err != nil { return cell, err } _ = sortCoordinates(rect) ws.MergeCells.Cells[i].rect = rect } if cellInRange([]int{col, row}, ws.MergeCells.Cells[i].rect) { The `ref != ""` condition means an empty `ref` skips the block that populates `rect`, so `rect` stays nil. The `cellInRange` call on the next line is unconditional and receives that nil slice. `Ref` comes straight from `xl/worksheets/sheetN.xml` through `encoding/xml`, so an empty string is entirely attacker-controlled. ### Impact Any consumer that opens an untrusted workbook and reads a cell panics. The loop scans every merged cell, so any cell reference triggers it, not a specific one. Affected entry points include `GetCellValue`, `GetCellType`, `GetCellFormula`, `SetCellValue` and the in-cell branch of `GetPictures`. The streaming `Rows` and `GetRows` use the SAX path and do not go through this parser, and `GetMergeCells` routes through `Rect()` which errors cleanly, which is probably why this has not surfaced before. There is no option or flag involved; opening the file succeeds and the panic fires on the first cell read. Unless the caller wraps the call in `recover()` it takes the process down. This is a regression. Commit a34c81e (PR #1500, 2023-03-20) replaced `checkCellInRangeRef`, whose `len(rng) != 2` guard returned cleanly for an empty ref, with the cached-rect fast path above, and the guard did not come along. `git merge-base --is-ancestor` confirms that commit is an ancestor of v2.11.0, so released versions are affected as well as HEAD. ### Proof of concept Executed at HEAD. Build a minimal xlsx whose `xl/worksheets/sheet1.xml` contains: <mergeCells count="1"><mergeCell ref=""></mergeCell></mergeCells> Then: f, err := excelize.OpenReader(bytes.NewReader(data)) if err != nil { t.Fatal(err) } _, _ = f.GetCellValue("Sheet1", "A1") Observed, running against the repository at HEAD: panic: runtime error: index out of range [0] with length 0 excelize.cellInRange cell.go:1691 excelize.(*xlsxWorksheet).mergeCellsParser cell.go:1660 excelize.(*File).getCellStringFunc cell.go:1512 excelize.(*File).GetCellValue cell.go:72 `OpenReader` itself returns no error; the file is 1656 bytes. A1, B1 and A2 all reproduce it. For context on how targeted this is, I ran a battery of 38 crafted files covering data validation, conditional formatting, cell and row references, number formats, cols, hyperlinks, dimension, shared strings and tables. Only the empty-ref merge cell panicked; everything else returned a clean error. The other parsing paths look well guarded. ### Suggested fix Skip the entry when the rectangle is empty, before the range test: if len(ws.MergeCells.Cells[i].rect) == 0 { continue } Credit goes to arpitjain099.

    Affected packages

    Package

    Name: github.com/xuri/excelize/v2

    Purl: pkg:golang/github.com/xuri/excelize/v2

    Affected ranges

    Type: SEMVER

    Events:

    Introduced- 2.7.1
    Fixed -2.11.1-0.20260820023833-99903a3240e5

    Affected versions

    Common Vulnerability Scoring System

    Attack Vector
    Network
    Adjacent
    Local
    Physical
    Privileges Required
    None
    Low
    High
    User Interaction
    None
    Required
    Scope
    Unchanged
    Changed
    Confidentiality
    None
    Low
    High
    Integrity
    None
    Low
    High
    Availability
    None
    Low
    High
    GHSA-g27h-8qhm-6pff | CVE-DB