CVE-2026-33929 PUBLISHED

Apache PDFBox Examples: Path Traversal in PDFBox ExtractEmbeddedFiles Example Code

Assigner: apache
Reserved: 24.03.2026 Published: 14.04.2026 Updated: 14.04.2026

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.

Product Status

Vendor Apache Software Foundation
Product Apache PDFBox Examples
Versions Default: unaffected
  • affected from 2.0.24 to 2.0.36 (incl.)
  • affected from 3.0.0 to 3.0.7 (incl.)

Credits

  • Kaixuan Li finder

References

Problem Types

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