CVE-2026-33929

Description

Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') vulnerability in Apache PDFBox Examples. This issue affects the ExtractEmbeddedFiles example in Apache PDFBox: from 2.0.24 through 2.0.36, from 3.0.0 through 3.0.7. Users are recommended to update to version 2.0.37 or 3.0.8 once available. Until then, they should apply the fix provided in GitHub PR 427. The ExtractEmbeddedFiles example contained a path traversal vulnerability (CWE-22) mentioned in CVE-2026-23907. However the change in the releases 2.0.36 and 3.0.7 is flawed because it doesn't consider the file path separator. Because of that, a user having writing rights on /home/ABC could be victim to a malicious PDF resulting in a write attempt to any path starting with /home/ABC, e.g. "/home/ABCDEF". Users who have copied this example into their production code should apply the mentioned change. The example has been changed accordingly and is available in the project repository.

PUBLISHED Reserved 2026-03-24 | Published 2026-04-14 | Updated 2026-04-14 | Assigner apache

Problem types

CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

Product status

Credits

Kaixuan Li finder

References

github.com/apache/pdfbox/pull/427/changes patch

lists.apache.org/thread/op3lyx1ngzy4qycn06l6hljyf28ff0zs mailing-list

lists.apache.org/thread/j8l07tgzy9dm8d8n0f3c45h7zg7t3ld6 vendor-advisory

cve.org (CVE-2026-33929)

nvd.nist.gov (CVE-2026-33929)

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