The product uses a fixed or controlled search path to find resources, but one or more locations in that path can be under the control of unintended actors.
Hard-code the search path to a set of known-safe values (such as system directories), or only allow them to be specified by the administrator in a configuration file. Do not allow these settings to be modified by an external party. Be careful to avoid related weaknesses such as CWE-426 and CWE-428.
When invoking other programs, specify those programs using fully-qualified pathnames. While this is an effective approach, code that uses fully-qualified pathnames might not be portable to other systems that do not use the same pathnames. The portability can be improved by locating the full-qualified paths in a centralized, easily-modifiable location within the source code, and having the code refer to these paths.
Remove or restrict all environment settings before invoking other programs. This includes the PATH environment variable, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and other settings that identify the location of code libraries, and any application-specific search paths.
Check your search path before use and remove any elements that are likely to be unsafe, such as the current working directory or a temporary files directory. Since this is a denylist approach, it might not be a complete solution.
Use other functions that require explicit paths. Making use of any of the other readily available functions that require explicit paths is a safe way to avoid this problem. For example, system() in C does not require a full path since the shell can take care of finding the program using the PATH environment variable, while execl() and execv() require a full path.
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