Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
CWE-59
The product attempts to access a file based on the filename, but it does not properly prevent that filename from identifying a link or shortcut that resolves to an unintended resource.
We track 491 vulnerabilities of this type. 100% are rated high or critical, and the average CVSS score is 8.0. 25 have been exploited in real attacks.
How this weakness is prevented
- 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.
Latest Improper Link Resolution Before File Access vulnerabilities
- 8.1 High severity
ludwig: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Ludwig is a low-code framework for building custom LLMs, neural networks, and other AI models. Prior to 0.17.8, ludwig.datasets.archives.extract_archive() validated tar member names before calling TarFile.extractall() but did not validate symlink members or ha
- 7.8 High severity
Red Hat Hardened Images: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
A flaw was found in BusyBox's dpkg-deb archive extraction. The ar archive handler flushes deferred symlinks after each archive member, unlike the tar, cpio, and unzip handlers which flush once after the last member. A specially crafted .deb archive with two da
- 7.8 High severity
Windows 10 Version 1607: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Microsoft Windows Search Component allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- 7.8 High severity
Windows 10 Version 1607: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Microsoft Windows Search Component allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- 7.8 High severity
Windows 10 Version 1607: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Windows AppX Deployment Service allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- 7.0 High severity
Windows 10 Version 21H2: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Windows Update Orchestrator Service allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- 7.8 High severity
Windows 10 Version 1607: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Microsoft Windows Search Component allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- 7.8 High severity
Windows 10 Version 1607: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Windows User Profile Service allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- 7.8 High severity
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2): Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') in Windows Subsystem for Linux allows an authorized attacker to elevate privileges locally.
- 8.5 High severity
UniconOS: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') vulnerability in Citrix UniconOS. This issue affects UniconOS: before 2607 CR and before 2603 LTSR CU2.
- 7.1 High severity
serena: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Serena before 2.0.0 contains an improper link resolution vulnerability that allows attackers to access files outside the project root by committing symlinks inside a repository. Project.is_path_in_project() normalizes paths lexically without resolving symlinks
- 8.1 High severity
nginx-ui: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Nginx UI is a web user interface for the Nginx web server. From 2.0.0 until 2.5.0, internal/backup/restore.go extracts inner archives before applying the restore_nginx and restore_nginx_ui flags and permits symlinks targeting the live Nginx configuration path.
- 8.8 High severity
Migration Toolkit for Applications 8: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
A flaw was found in ansible-core. When installing a collection with `ansible-galaxy collection install`, the archive extractor validates member paths using lexical path normalisation (os.path.abspath) instead of resolving symbolic links (os.path.realpath), and
- 7.3 High severity
banks: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Banks generates meaningful LLM prompts using a simple template language. Prior to 2.5.1, Banks DirectoryPromptRegistry does not reject symbolic links for index.json or discovered and existing .jinja prompt files. In an application where untrusted users can inf
- 7.8 High severity
Intego Antivirus: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Intego Antivirus for Windows through 3.0.0.1 contains a link following vulnerability in its optimization module that allows local unprivileged users to delete arbitrary folders as SYSTEM. Attackers can replace a scanned duplicate file's directory with a juncti
- 8.5 High severity
backstage: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Backstage is an open framework for building developer portals. Prior to 3.3.1, 3.4.1, 4.0.3 and 4.1.0, the @backstage/plugin-scaffolder-backend package is affected by improper task state validation in scaffolder backend. An authenticated user with permission t
- 9.9 Critical severity
backstage: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Backstage is an open framework for building developer portals. Prior to 0.3.10 in @backstage/plugin-scaffolder-backend-module-bitbucket-cloud and 0.2.25 in @backstage/plugin-scaffolder-backend-module-bitbucket-server, the Bitbucket pull-request Scaffolder acti
- 9.4 Critical severity
classroom50: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Classroom 50 is a free and open-source tool for managing and grading programming assignments via GitHub. Prior to version 1.11.0, `gh teacher download` clones each student's assignment repository and then writes autograde artifacts (`result.json` and `results.
- 7.8 High severity
Core: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
A local privilege escalation vulnerability in Kiteworks could have allowed an attacker with an existing shell under a low-privileged service account to escalate to root privileges on the appliance.
- 7.8 High severity
Core: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
A privilege escalation vulnerability in Kiteworks could allow an attacker who has already obtained code execution as an unprivileged backend service account on the appliance to escalate to root. A privileged routine did not safely handle a filesystem path that
- 8.5 High severity
SDP Client: Relative Path Traversal
Cato Networks SDP Client for Windows before 6.12.6 allows a local user to delete arbitrary files with SYSTEM privileges via improper validation of a client-supplied SID over a local IPC named pipe.
- 8.6 High severity
MCP Toolbox for Databases: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Improper link resolution (CWE-59 / CWE-22) in the allowedLocalRoots path validation in Google MCP Toolbox for Databases versions 1.2.0 through 1.9.0 allows a remote authenticated attacker with tool execution permissions to bypass directory boundary restriction
- 7.0 High severity
Full Client: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
TeamViewer Full Client and Host for Linux prior version 15.82 contains an improper path validation vulnerability in the Cloud Session Recording (CSR) functionality. By exploiting a race condition during path validation and subsequent file access, a local authe
- 9.1 Critical severity
decompress: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
The decompress package for Node.js extracts archives. Prior to 10.2.2 and 11.1.4, the default decompress(input, output) API relies on lexical containment checks that do not account for the kernel following a planted symlink chain. An attacker can supply a craf
- 9.9 Critical severity
LXD: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution in the migration receive path in Canonical LXD versions 4.0 and later (fixed in 4.0.14, 5.0.10, 5.21.8 and 6.10) on Linux allows an authenticated client that can create instances or custom storage volumes in a project, or a malicious m
- 8.1 High severity
contrast: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Contrast is a confidential-computing runtime for Kubernetes. In versions before 1.19.1, the Kata agent policies generated by the Contrast CLI contained a flaw in the CopyFile verification that allowed arbitrary writes to the guest root filesystem. A malicious
- 9.9 Critical severity
froxlor: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Froxlor is a server administration panel. In versions 2.3.10 and earlier, the customer data-export (DataDump) cron fails to validate intermediate path components of the export destination: Froxlor\FileDir::makeCorrectDir() contains an off-by-one in its path-co
- 9.6 Critical severity
froxlor: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Froxlor through 2.3.10 is vulnerable to arbitrary file deletion via symlink following in the FTP data deletion cron task. Cron task 8 (deleteFtpData), queued when an FTP account is deleted, calls FileDir::makeCorrectDir() without the $fixed_homedir argument, s
- 7.5 High severity
hugo: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Hugo is a static site generator. In versions after v0.123.0 and before v0.166.0, Hugo's symlink confinement checks stopped at the mount root itself, so a theme or module checked into themes/ (or a vendored module) could contain a symlink at a mount root (for e
- 7.5 High severity
hugo: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Hugo versions from v0.161.0 through v0.165.0 run Node.js tools (css.PostCSS, css.TailwindCSS, js.Babel) under the Node.js permission model to restrict file system reads to the project directory and configured mounts. Because the Node.js permission model valida
- 7.0 High severity
gitoxide: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
gitoxide gix-fs before 0.23.0 contains a path validation bypass vulnerability in the worktree checkout mechanism that allows attackers to escape the worktree directory via symlink manipulation. During forced checkout with overwrite_existing enabled, attackers
- 9.8 Critical severity
Apache BuildStream: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Improper link resolution before file access ('link following') vulnerability in the `tar` source plugin of Apache BuildStream running on Python < 3.12 allows malicious source tarballs to write files on the host, with the privileges of the user running BuildStr
- 8.2 High severity
ansible_jailexec: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Ansible FreeBSD Jail Connection Plugin is an Ansible connection plugin for FreeBSD Jails via jexec. Through version 1.3.0, the jailexec connection plugin's put_file resolved a transfer's destination to a path on the jail host ( + ) and ran mkdir -p and mv ther
- 8.8 High severity
Grafana OSS: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Grafana OSS and Grafana Enterprise did not safely resolve symbolic links when extracting plugin archives. A crafted plugin archive can chain relative symbolic link entries to escape the plugin installation directory, writing arbitrary files and an executable b
- 8.8 High severity
oras-go: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
oras-go is a Go library for managing OCI artifacts. Prior to 2.6.2, content/file.Store extraction of OCI layers marked with io.deis.oras.content.unpack=true can write outside the store working directory. The pushDir path through extractTarDirectory and ensureL
- 9.4 Critical severity
Docker Sandboxes: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
On macOS, the virtio-fs host server used by Docker Sandboxes improperly follows symlinks when reopening an unlinked file from a stored path. A malicious guest can replace a parent directory with a symlink, escape the shared workspace, and read or modify arbitr
- 8.4 High severity
macOS: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
This issue was addressed with improved handling of symlinks. This issue is fixed in macOS Golden Gate 27. An app may be able to break out of its sandbox.
- 8.4 High severity
CPython: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
In CPython 3.13 and earlier, the tarfile module's data and tar extraction filters are vulnerable to crafted archives containing a hard link to a symbolic link. Such archives may cause extraction to modify the permissions or modification time of a file outside
- 7.1 High severity
rclone: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
rclone is a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers. Prior to 1.75.1, when backend/local runs with --links, a source .rclonelink object can plant a symlink in the destination and later directory metadata
- 8.8 High severity
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
A flaw was found in bubblewrap. During sandbox setup, creating files or directories under the new root can follow a parent symlink onto the host via /oldroot, writing attacker-chosen paths outside the sandbox as the launching user. This happens before the sand