This article is a part of our Vulnerability Database (back to index)
Path Traversal occurrences in Squashfs-tools
squashfs_opendir in unsquash-2.c in Squashfs-Tools 4.5 allows Directory Traversal, a different vulnerability than CVE-2021-40153. A squashfs filesystem that has been crafted to include a symbolic link and then contents under the same filename in a filesystem can cause unsquashfs to first create the symbolic link pointing outside the expected directory, and then the subsequent write operation will cause the unsquashfs process to write through the symbolic link elsewhere in the filesystem. (2021-09-14, CVE-2021-41072)
squashfs_opendir in unsquash-1.c in Squashfs-Tools 4.5 stores the filename in the directory entry; this is then used by unsquashfs to create the new file during the unsquash. The filename is not validated for traversal outside of the destination directory, and thus allows writing to locations outside of the destination. (2021-08-27, CVE-2021-40153)
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).