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Weakness (CWE)

CWE-61: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following

Compound Incomplete

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)

  1. 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.

  2. 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

All Critical High Medium Low Exploited only Public exploit

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  • Medium 6.5
    CVE-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…

    runtipi runtipi
  • Medium 6.5
    CVE-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…

    AWS AWS Serverless Application Model Command Line Interface aws-sam-cli PyPI