CWE-38 – Path Traversal: ‘absolutepathnamehere’

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Description

A software system that accepts input in the form of a backslash absolute path (‘absolutepathnamehere’) without appropriate validation can allow an attacker to traverse the file system to unintended locations or access arbitrary files.

Modes of Introduction:

– Implementation

 

 

Related Weaknesses

CWE-36

 

Consequences

Confidentiality, Integrity: Read Files or Directories, Modify Files or Directories

 

Potential Mitigations

Phase: Implementation

Effectiveness: High

Description: 

Phase: Implementation

Description: 

Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application’s current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174). Such errors could be used to bypass allowlist validation schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked.

CVE References

  • CVE-1999-1263
    • Mail client allows remote attackers to overwrite arbitrary files via an e-mail message containing a uuencoded attachment that specifies the full pathname for the file to be modified.
  • CVE-2003-0753
    • Remote attackers can read arbitrary files via a full pathname to the target file in config parameter.
  • CVE-2002-1525
    • Remote attackers can read arbitrary files via an absolute pathname.