This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Path Traversal occurrences in Linux Kernel
** DISPUTED ** fs/nfsd/nfs3xdr.c in the Linux kernel through 5.10.8, when there is an NFS export of a subdirectory of a filesystem, allows remote attackers to traverse to other parts of the filesystem via READDIRPLUS. NOTE: some parties argue that such a subdirectory export is not intended to prevent this attack; see also the exports(5) no_subtree_check default behavior. (2021-01-19, CVE-2021-3178)
In drivers/target/target_core_xcopy.c in the Linux kernel before 5.10.7, insufficient identifier checking in the LIO SCSI target code can be used by remote attackers to read or write files via directory traversal in an XCOPY request, aka CID-2896c93811e3. For example, an attack can occur over a network if the attacker has access to one iSCSI LUN. The attacker gains control over file access because I/O operations are proxied via an attacker-selected backstore. (2021-01-13, CVE-2020-28374)
An issue was discovered in fs/io_uring.c in the Linux kernel before 5.6. It unsafely handles the root directory during path lookups, and thus a process inside a mount namespace can escape to unintended filesystem locations, aka CID-ff002b30181d. (2020-11-28, CVE-2020-29373)
Linux kernel CIFS implementation, version 4.9.0 is vulnerable to a relative paths injection in directory entry lists. (2019-11-27, CVE-2019-10220)
Why Path Traversal can be dangerous
Relative Path Confusion means that your web server is configured to serve responses to ambiguous URLs. This configuration can possibly cause confusion about the correct relative path for the URL. It is also an issue of resources, such as images, styles etc., which are specified in the response using relative path, not the absolute URL.
If the web browser permits to parse "cross-content" response, the attacker may be able to fool the web browser into interpreting HTML into other content types, which can then lead to a cross site scripting attack (link do XSS).