Weakness · Medium

CWE-56: Path Equivalence: 'filedir*' (Wildcard)

What it is

The product accepts path input in the form of asterisk wildcard ('filedir*') without appropriate validation, which can lead to ambiguous path resolution and allow an attacker to traverse the file system to unintended locations or access arbitrary files.

MITRE CWE 4.19.1

Severity (our rating)
Medium
Likelihood of exploit
Not rated by MITRE
Introduced during
Implementation
Exploited in the wild
No CVE in CISA's catalog

What an attacker can do

  • Read Files or Directories (Confidentiality, Integrity)
  • Modify Files or Directories (Confidentiality, Integrity)

How to prevent it

Implementation

  • Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174). Such errors could be used to bypass allowlist validation schemes by introducing dangerous inputs after they have been checked.

CWE-56 on MITRE's CWE site

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Source: MITRE Common Weakness Enumeration, CWE version 4.19.1. CWE is a trademark of The MITRE Corporation.