CVE-2026-33929

NameCVE-2026-33929
DescriptionImproper 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.
SourceCVE (at NVD; CERT, ENISA, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Debian ELTS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source PackageReleaseVersionStatus
libpdfbox-java (PTS)bookworm, bullseye1:1.8.16-2vulnerable
forky, sid, trixie1:1.8.16-5vulnerable
libpdfbox2-java (PTS)bullseye2.0.23-1vulnerable
bookworm2.0.27-2vulnerable
forky, sid, trixie2.0.29-1vulnerable

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

PackageTypeReleaseFixed VersionUrgencyOriginDebian Bugs
libpdfbox-javasource(unstable)(unfixed)unimportant
libpdfbox2-javasource(unstable)(unfixed)unimportant

Notes

Examples are not shipped in the Debian package
https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/04/14/4
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/PDFBOX-6180
https://github.com/apache/pdfbox/pull/427
Fixed by: https://github.com/apache/pdfbox/commit/8e4c32fed879d524c90163ad6de30f398aabf83b

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