Apache PDFBox Examples: Path Traversal in PDFBox ExtractEmbeddedFiles Example Code
Summary
Apache PDFBox Examples: Path Traversal in PDFBox ExtractEmbeddedFiles Example Code
Original description
The description as published by the source.
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.
Source: OSV.dev (Open Source Vulnerabilities) NVD GitHub Advisory OSV
Fix status by distribution
Fixed packages published by each distribution for this CVE
- Debian DEBIAN-CVE-2026-33929 libpdfbox-java
- Ubuntu UBUNTU-CVE-2026-33929 libpdfbox-java
References
- advisory github.com
- advisory lists.apache.org
- advisory nvd.nist.gov
- patch github.com
- web repo.maven.apache.org
- web lists.apache.org