UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
CWE-61
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.
We track 86 vulnerabilities of this type. 100% are rated high or critical, and the average CVSS score is 8.1. 1 has been exploited in real attacks.
How this weakness is prevented
- 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.
- 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 UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following vulnerabilities
- 8.6 High severity
iSulad: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
UNIX symbolic link (symlink) following vulnerability in openEuler iSulad on Linux. This vulnerability is associated with program file src/daemon/modules/spec/specs_mount.c. This issue affects iSulad: through 2.1.6. If an attacker can get the victim or the plat
- 7.3 High severity
Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for AIX: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Insecure Temporary File Vulnerability in Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for AIX (for markets outside Japan) and Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager EX for AIX (for the Japanese market). This issue affects Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for AIX: from 7.4.1-00 before 9.0.4
- 8.2 High severity
Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following Vulnerability in Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux. This issue affects Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux: from 8.6.2.-00 before 9.0.5-00.
- 7.9 High severity
Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following Vulnerability in Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux. This issue affects Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux: from 8.5.3.-00 before 9.0.5-00.
- 8.2 High severity
Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following Vulnerability in Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux. This issue affects Hitachi Dynamic Link Manager for Linux: from 8.6.2.-00 before 9.0.5-00.
- 8.4 High severity
FreedomBox: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
In FreedomBox before 26.15, unprivileged user accounts can read/write files for which they lack permissions by setting the authorized_keys file to be a symlink. NOTE: FreedomBox is a Debian Pure Blend, which means that it distributes its software through Debia
- 7.8 High severity
pi-hole: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Pi-hole is a DNS sinkhole that protects devices from unwanted content without installing any client-side software. From 6.4.2 until 6.5, the root-run advanced/Scripts/updatecheck.sh cron job applies truncate -s 0 and chmod 644 to /etc/pihole/versions while fol
- 7.9 High severity
wasmtime: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
wasmtime-wasi in Wasmtime before 36.0.18, 37.0.0 before 48.0.6, and 49.0.0 before 49.0.3 re-appends a trailing slash to rename source paths, causing renameat on macOS and FreeBSD hosts to follow directory symlinks. A guest with sandbox write access can rename
- 7.4 High severity
zip2: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
zip is a zip library for Rust that supports reading and writing simple ZIP files. From 7.2.0 until 9.0.0, ZipArchive::extract and ZipArchive::extract_unwrapped_root_dir use safe_prepare_path in src/read/zipfile.rs and simplified_components in src/path.rs to va
- 7.9 High severity
wasmtime: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Wasmtime before 24.0.13, 25.0.0 before 36.0.14, 37.0.0 before 46.0.3, and 47.0.0 before 47.0.4 allows a filesystem sandbox escape in wasmtime-wasi because its cap-std dependency mishandles symlinks with trailing slashes on macOS and Linux kernels lacking opena
- 9.4 Critical severity
QuMagie: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
An unix symbolic link (symlink) following vulnerability has been reported to affect QuMagie. If a remote attacker gains a user account, they can then exploit the vulnerability to compromise the security of the system. We have already fixed the vulnerability in
- 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.
- 7.7 High severity
@anthropic-ai/claude-code: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Claude Code validated that a target file path resided within the project working directory at permission-check time, but re-resolved the path at write time without repeating that validation. This time-of-check to time-of-use (TOCTOU) gap allowed an attacker wh
- 7.1 High severity
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
A path traversal vulnerability in Flatpak's handling of the files/etc directory during app deployment allows a malicious Flatpak app to cause certain host system files (such as passwd, group, machine-id, or resolv.conf) to be emptied or replaced with a symlink
- 7.1 High severity
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 10: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
A path traversal vulnerability in Flatpak's handling of the export/bin directory during app deployment allows a malicious Flatpak app to cause deletion of attacker-chosen files outside the deployment directory when the app is installed or upgraded. In system-w
- 7.4 High severity
Flatpak: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
In Flatpak before 1.18.1, the revokefs writer, used by the flatpak-system-helper to receive repository data from unprivileged callers, validated file paths by rejecting literal .. components but did not prevent symlink traversal. A malicious local user in an a
- 9.8 Critical severity
HP Linux Imaging and Printing Software (HPLIP): UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
HP has identified and remediated multiple externally reported vulnerabilities within HPLIP. The findings affect several software components that could potentially enable remote code execution, privilege escalation, denial of service, information disclosure, or
- 7.4 High severity
Flatpak: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
In Flatpak before 1.18.1, a malicious sandboxed app can obtain arbitrary read and write access to files on the host, which can be escalated to arbitrary code execution on the host, a different vulnerability than CVE-2026-76925. Flatpak creates a few app data d
- 7.8 High severity
Power Protect Cyber Recovery: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Dell PowerProtect Cyber Recovery, versions Prior to 20.3, contain an UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following vulnerability. A low privileged attacker with local access could potentially exploit this vulnerability, leading to Script injection.
- 9.9 Critical severity
incus: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
Incus is a system container and virtual machine manager. Prior to version 7.3.0, an unprivileged, project-confined Incus user (a non-admin TLS/RBAC identity with `can_create_images` and `can_create_instances`) can execute arbitrary code as root on the host. A
- 7.3 High severity
AppSync: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Dell AppSync Version 4.6.0.0, Dell Metro Node Version 8.0.0, Dell UCC Edge Version 3.0.1, Dell VxRail Version 8.0.322, Dell PowerMax Version 10.3.0, Dell Unity Version 5.4, Dell PowerFlex Manager Version 4.5.4, Dell PowerFlex Intelligent Catalog Versions 46.37
- 7.1 High severity
rsync: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
rsync before 3.5.0 contains an arbitrary file read vulnerability that allows attackers to read files accessible to the rsync daemon process by exploiting symlink following in input configuration file handling including --files-from, --password-file, and filter
- 8.2 High severity
proot-distro: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
proot-distro is a utility for managing proot containers. Prior to version 5.1.5, proot-distro install extracted plain tarball root filesystems through _extract_plain_tar() in proot_distro/commands/install.py and Docker layers through _apply_layer() in proot_di
- 8.8 High severity
Cribl Stream: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Improper validation of symbolic links in the Pack Git import feature in Cribl Stream before 4.18.2 allows a remote authenticated attacker with Pack import and pipeline preview permissions to execute arbitrary code as the Cribl server process via a crafted Git
- 7.3 High severity
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
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 or
- 7.1 High severity
openSUSE Tumbleweed: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
A UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following vulnerability in openSUSE Tumbleweed suricata package allows the suricata user to escalate to root. This issue affects openSUSE Tumbleweed: from ? before 8.0.5-2.1; openSUSE Tumbleweed: from ? before 8.0.5-2.1.
- 7.8 High severity
os: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
On Unix systems, opening a file in an os.Root improperly follows symlinks to locations outside of the Root when the final path component of the a path is a symbolic link and the path ends in /. For example, 'root.Open("symlink/")' will open "symlink" even when
- 8.1 High severity
extract-zip: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
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 po
- 9.0 Critical severity
gogs: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Gogs is an open source self-hosted Git service. Prior to 0.14.3, (*Repository).UploadRepoFiles checks for symlinks only on the leaf of the upload target (osx.IsSymlink(targetPath)). The siblings UpdateRepoFile, DeleteRepoFile, and GetDiffPreview use hasSymlink
- 7.3 High severity
Red Hat Container Native Virtualization 4.12: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
A flaw was found in KubeVirt's safepath package used by virt-handler. The OpenAtNoFollow function uses O_PATH|O_NOFOLLOW to obtain a file descriptor to a path leaf, but downstream operations resolve the path via /proc/self/fd/N using link-following syscalls. W
- 9.6 Critical severity
langflow: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Langflow is a tool for building and deploying AI-powered agents and workflows. Prior to 1.9.2, by controlling a files that are digested into the RAG, an attacker can direct the node to read any file on the file-system by absolute path. All components based on
- 7.8 High severity
Language Servers for AWS: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Missing symlink validation in Language Servers for AWS may allow an arbitrary file write outside of the workspace trust boundary. This may occur when a local user opens a workspace with a maliciously crafted symlink that resolves to a file path outside the wor
- 8.3 High severity
onedev: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
OneDev is a Git server with CI/CD, kanban, and packages. In versions 15.0.6 and below, TarUtils.untar() creates symbolic links verbatim from TAR entry getLinkName() without validating whether the target is an absolute path. A subsequent file entry in the same
- 8.5 High severity
LiteSpeed cPanel Plugin UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following Exploited
LiteSpeed cPanel plugin before 2.4.8 (as distributed in LiteSpeed WHM PlugIn before 5.3.2.0) mishandles symlinks provided by a user with FTP or web shell access on a shared hosting server running CloudLinux/CageFS, as exploited in the wild in May 2026.
- 7.2 High severity
moby: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Moby is an open source container framework. In Docker Engine prior to version 29.5.1, Docker Daemon versions 28.5.2 and prior, and Moby Daemon prior to version 2.0.0-beta.14, a race condition during docker cp mount setup allows a malicious container to redirec
- 7.2 High severity
Vvveb: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Vvveb before 1.0.8.3 contains an unrestricted file upload vulnerability in the plugin upload endpoint that allows super_admin users to execute arbitrary PHP code by uploading a malicious plugin ZIP file. Attackers can craft a ZIP containing a plugin.php with a
- 8.8 High severity
PostgreSQL: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
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 th
- 8.1 High severity
pgAdmin 4: UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following
Symbolic-link path traversal (CWE-61, CWE-22) in pgAdmin 4 File Manager. check_access_permission used os.path.abspath, which resolves '..' but does not resolve symbolic links, while the subsequent kernel write follows symlinks. An authenticated user could plan
- 8.7 High severity
zrok: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
zrok is software for sharing web services, files, and network resources. Prior to version 2.0.2, the zrok WebDAV drive backend (davServer.Dir) restricts path traversal through lexical normalization but does not prevent symlink following. When a symbolic link i
- 7.0 High severity
Advanced SystemCare: Improper Link Resolution Before File Access
A security flaw has been discovered in IObit Advanced SystemCare 19. This affects an unknown part of the file ASC.exe of the component Service. The manipulation results in symlink following. Attacking locally is a requirement. This attack is characterized by h