Path Traversal in Golang Go

CVE-2023-45283

The filepath package does not recognize paths with a \??\ prefix as special. On Windows, a path beginning with \??\ is a Root Local Device path equivalent to a path beginning with \\?\. Paths with a \??\ prefix may be used to access arbitrary locations on the system. For example, the path \??\c:\x is equivalent to the more common path c:\x. Before fix, Clean could convert a rooted path such as \a\..\??\b into the root local device path \??\b. Clean will now convert this to .\??\b. Similarly, Join(\, ??, b) could convert a seemingly innocent sequence of path elements into the root local device path \??\b. Join will now convert this to \.\??\b. In addition, with fix, IsAbs now correctly reports paths beginning with \??\ as absolute, and VolumeName correctly reports the \??\ prefix as a volume name. UPDATE: Go 1.20.11 and Go 1.21.4 inadvertently changed the definition of the volume name in Windows paths starting with \?, resulting in filepath.Clean(\?\c:) returning \?\c: rather than \?\c:\ (among other effects). The previous behavior has been restored.

Vulnerability class: Path Traversal (Directory Traversal)

EPSS: 0.028 (84.7th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 7.5 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2023-45283?
CVE-2023-45283 is a high-severity vulnerability in Golang Go, classified under Path Traversal. CVSS score: 7.5/10. Published 2023-11-09.
How severe is CVE-2023-45283?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 7.5 out of 10.
Is CVE-2023-45283 known to be exploited?
8 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.