Description
Path traversal vulnerability in Gleam's dependency management allows arbitrary directory deletion via malicious build/packages/packages.toml content. Package keys read from build/packages/packages.toml by LocalPackages::read_from_disc are passed without validation to paths.build_packages_package(), which constructs a filesystem path by joining the project build directory with the attacker-controlled key. The resulting path is then passed to fs::delete_directory (which calls remove_dir_all). No check is performed to ensure the path remains within the intended build/packages/ directory. Both absolute paths and relative traversal sequences (e.g. ../) are accepted as package keys, allowing deletion of arbitrary directories. An attacker who can cause a victim to run gleam deps download on a project containing a malicious build/packages/packages.toml (e.g. by committing the normally-gitignored file to a repository) can cause arbitrary directories on the victim's system to be recursively deleted. This issue affects Gleam from 0.18.0-rc1 until 1.17.0.
Problem types
CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')
Product status
0.18.0-rc1 (semver) before 1.17.0
0.18.0-rc1 (semver) before 1.17.0
ed7aec0484f10d60978b63788c8a6497590855ab (git) before 690ca069817bee5f77a28fc3e360627c1da19291
v0.18.0-rc1-elixir (other) before v1.17.0-elixir
v0.18.0-rc1-erlang (other) before v1.17.0-erlang
v0.18.0-rc1-node (other) before v1.17.0-node
v0.18.0-rc1-node-slim (other) before v1.17.0-node-slim
v0.18.0-rc1-elixir-slim (other) before v1.17.0-elixir-slim
v0.18.0-rc1-erlang-slim (other) before v1.17.0-erlang-slim
v0.18.0-rc1-erlang-alpine (other) before v1.17.0-erlang-alpine
v0.18.0-rc1-elixir-alpine (other) before v1.17.0-elixir-alpine
v0.18.0-rc1-node-alpine (other) before v1.17.0-node-alpine
v0.18.0-rc1-scratch (other) before v1.17.0-scratch
Credits
Aly (spect3r1)
Abdelrahman Ahmed Aboelkasem (0x2face)
Louis Pilfold
Jonatan Männchen / EEF
References
github.com/.../gleam/security/advisories/GHSA-jqvf-f6p2-wrv3
github.com/.../gleam/security/advisories/GHSA-jqvf-f6p2-wrv3
cna.erlef.org/cves/CVE-2026-43965.html
osv.dev/vulnerability/EEF-CVE-2026-43965
github.com/...ommit/690ca069817bee5f77a28fc3e360627c1da19291