Path Traversal in Ctfer-Io Chall-Manager

CVE-2025-53632

Chall-Manager is a platform-agnostic system able to start Challenges on Demand of a player. When decoding a scenario (i.e. a zip archive), the path of the file to write is not checked, potentially leading to zip slips. Exploitation does not require authentication nor authorization, so anyone can exploit it. It should nonetheless not be exploitable as it is highly recommended to bury Chall-Manager deep within the infrastructure due to its large capabilities, so no users could reach the system. Patch has been implemented by commit 47d188f and shipped in v0.1.4.

Vulnerability class: Path Traversal (Directory Traversal)

EPSS: 0.007 (51.5th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.1 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2025-53632?
CVE-2025-53632 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Ctfer-Io Chall-Manager, classified under Path Traversal. CVSS score: 9.1/10. Published 2025-07-10.
How severe is CVE-2025-53632?
Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.1 out of 10.
Is CVE-2025-53632 known to be exploited?
3 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.