Weakness (CWE)
CWE-61: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
The product, when opening a file or directory, does not sufficiently account for when the file is a symbolic link that resolves to a target outside of the intended control sphere. This could allow an attacker to cause the product to operate on unauthorized files.
How to prevent it (2 mitigations)
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Implementation
Symbolic link attacks often occur when a program creates a tmp directory that stores files/links. Access to the directory should be restricted to the program as to prevent attackers from manipulating the files.
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Architecture and Design
Follow the principle of least privilege when assigning access rights to entities in a software system.
Denying access to a file can prevent an attacker from replacing that file with a link to a sensitive file. Ensure good compartmentalization in the system to provide protected areas that can be trusted.
Source: MITRE CWE-61
14 results · Clear filters · Feed
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Medium 6.5CVE-2026-55168 Public exploit
Runtipi: Authenticated arbitrary file write via backup restore symlink planting
Runtipi is a personal homeserver orchestrator. In 4.10.0 and earlier, Runtipi accepts symbolic links from an attacker-controlled backup archive and copies them into live application paths during the backup restore flow. An authenticated attacker can plant use…
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High 7.3CVE-2026-12080 Public exploit
Qemu-kvm: qemu-guest-agent: local privilege escalation via symlink attack in guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys
A flaw was found in the QEMU Guest Agent (qga). A local unprivileged user can exploit a vulnerability in the guest-ssh-add-authorized-keys command handler by manipulating symbolic links. This can occur either through a deterministic directory-symlink bypass o…
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High 8.1CVE-2026-56876 Public exploit
extract-zip unvalidated symlink path traversal
extract-zip does not validate symlink targets when extracting zip archives. When processing a malicious zip file containing a symlink with a relative path like '../../../../etc/passwd', extract-zip will extract the symlink without validation, allowing it to p…
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High 8.5
LiteSpeed cPanel plugin before 2.4.8 (as distributed in LiteSpeed WHM PlugIn before 5.3.2.0) mishandles symlinks provid…
KEV Jun 15, 2026 -
High 8.8CVE-2026-6475 Public exploit
PostgreSQL pg_basebackup and pg_rewind can overwrite unrelated files of origin superuser choice
Symlink following in PostgreSQL pg_basebackup plain format and in pg_rewind allows an origin superuser to overwrite local files, e.g. /var/lib/postgres/.bashrc, that hijack the operating system account. It will remain the case that starting the server after t…
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High 7.4CVE-2026-24018 Public exploit
A UNIX symbolic link (Symlink) following vulnerability in Fortinet FortiClientLinux 7.4.0 through 7.4.4, FortiClientLin…
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Critical 9.5CVE-2025-68937 Public exploit
Forgejo before 13.0.2 allows attackers to write to unintended files, and possibly obtain server shell access, because o…
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High 7.3CVE-2025-52881 Public exploit
runc: LSM labels can be bypassed with malicious config using dummy procfs files
runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification. In versions 1.2.7, 1.3.2 and 1.4.0-rc.2, an attacker can trick runc into misdirecting writes to /proc to other procfs files through the use of a racing container with s…
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High 7.3CVE-2025-31133 Public exploit
runc container escape via "masked path" abuse due to mount race conditions
runc is a CLI tool for spawning and running containers according to the OCI specification. In versions 1.2.7 and below, 1.3.0-rc.1 through 1.3.1, 1.4.0-rc.1 and 1.4.0-rc.2 files, runc would not perform sufficient verification that the source of the bind-mount…
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Medium 6.5CVE-2025-3047 Public exploit
Path Traversal in AWS SAM CLI allows file copy to build container
When running the AWS Serverless Application Model Command Line Interface (SAM CLI) build process with Docker and symlinks are included in the build files, the container environment allows a user to access privileged files on the host by leveraging the elevate…
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Critical 10.0CVE-2024-28189 Public exploit
Judge0 vulnerable to Sandbox Escape Patch Bypass via chown running on Symbolic Link
Judge0 is an open-source online code execution system. The application uses the UNIX chown command on an untrusted file within the sandbox. An attacker can abuse this by creating a symbolic link (symlink) to a file outside the sandbox, allowing the attacker t…
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Critical 10.0CVE-2024-28185 Public exploit
Judge0 vulnerable to Sandbox Escape via Symbolic Link
Judge0 is an open-source online code execution system. The application does not account for symlinks placed inside the sandbox directory, which can be leveraged by an attacker to write to arbitrary files and gain code execution outside of the sandbox. When ex…
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High 8.1CVE-2023-37460 Public exploit
Plexus Archiver vulnerable to Arbitrary File Creation in AbstractUnArchiver
Plexis Archiver is a collection of Plexus components to create archives or extract archives to a directory with a unified `Archiver`/`UnArchiver` API. Prior to version 4.8.0, using AbstractUnArchiver for extracting an archive might lead to an arbitrary file c…
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High 7.3CVE-2017-14798 Public exploit
local privilege escalation in SUSE postgresql init script
A race condition in the postgresql init script could be used by attackers able to access the postgresql account to escalate their privileges to root.