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Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

CVE-2022-41956

Medium
6.5/10

Summary

Autolab is a course management service, initially developed by a team of students at Carnegie Mellon University, that enables instructors to offer autograded programming assignments to their students over the Web. A file disclosure vulnerability was discovered in Autolab's remote handin feature, whereby users are able to hand-in assignments using paths outside their submission directory. Users can then view the submission to view the file's contents. The vulnerability has been patched in version 2.10.0. As a workaround, ensure that the field for the remote handin feature is empty (Edit Assessment > Advanced > Remote handin path), and that you are not running Autolab as `root` (or any user that has write access to `/`). Alternatively, disable the remote handin feature if it is unneeded by replacing the body of `local_submit` in `app/controllers/assessment/handin.rb` with `render(plain: "Feature disabled", status: :bad_request) && return`.

  • LOW
  • NETWORK
  • NONE
  • UNCHANGED
  • NONE
  • LOW
  • HIGH
  • NONE

CWE-22 - Path Traversal

Path traversal (or directory traversal), is a vulnerability that allows malicious users to traverse the server's root directory, gaining access to arbitrary files and folders such as application code & data, back-end credentials, and sensitive operating system files. In the worst-case scenario, an attacker could potentially execute arbitrary files on the server, resulting in a denial of service attack. Such an exploit may severely impact the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of an application.

References

Advisory Timeline

  • Published