Path Traversal in Openprinting Cups

CVE-2026-34978

OpenPrinting CUPS is an open source printing system for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. In versions 2.4.16 and prior, the RSS notifier allows .. path traversal in notify-recipient-uri (e.g., rss:///../job.cache), letting a remote IPP client write RSS XML bytes outside CacheDir/rss (anywhere that is lp-writable). In particular, because CacheDir is group-writable by default (typically root:lp and mode 0770), the notifier (running as lp) can replace root-managed state files via temp-file + rename(). This PoC clobbers CacheDir/job.cache with RSS XML, and after restarting cupsd the scheduler fails to parse the job cache and previously queued jobs disappear. At time of publication, there are no publicly available patches.

Vulnerability class: Path Traversal (Directory Traversal)

EPSS: 0.004 (33.8th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 6.5 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:L.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2026-34978?
CVE-2026-34978 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Openprinting Cups, classified under Path Traversal. CVSS score: 6.5/10. Published 2026-04-03.
How severe is CVE-2026-34978?
Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 6.5 out of 10.