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Path Traversal occurrences in Nodebb
Nodebb is an open source Node.js based forum software. Prior to v1.18.5, a path traversal vulnerability was present that allowed users to access JSON files outside of the expected `languages/` directory. The vulnerability has been patched as of v1.18.5. Users are advised to upgrade as soon as possible. (2021-11-29, CVE-2021-43788)
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).