Cyber Resilience

CVE-2023-36827

Path Traversal in Ethyca Fides ≤ 2.15.1

Published
05 July 2023
Modified
21 November 2024
Patch / advisory
CVSS Score v3.1 7.5
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
EPSS Score 0.015 72th percentile
Risk Priority 60 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2023-36827 is a high-severity Path Traversal (CWE-22) vulnerability in Ethyca Fides. Its CVSS base score is 7.5 (High).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 28% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)

EU & UK References

Vulnerability Data

Fides is an open-source privacy engineering platform for managing the fulfillment of data privacy requests in a runtime environment, and the enforcement of privacy regulations in code. A path traversal (directory traversal) vulnerability affects fides versions lower than version `2.15.1`,…

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allowing remote attackers to access arbitrary files on the fides webserver container's filesystem. The vulnerability is patched in fides `2.15.1`. If the Fides webserver API is not directly accessible to attackers and is instead deployed behind a reverse proxy as recommended in Ethyca's security best practice documentation, and the reverse proxy is an AWS application load balancer, the vulnerability can't be exploited by these attackers. An AWS application load balancer will reject this attack with a 400 error. Additionally, any secrets supplied to the container using environment variables rather than a `fides.toml` configuration file are not affected by this vulnerability.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques

T1190 Exploit Public-Facing Application Initial Access
Adversaries may attempt to exploit a weakness in an Internet-facing host or system to initially access a network.
Derived from this CVE’s CWE(s) via the direct CWE→ATT&CK cross-walk.

CVEs Like This One

CVE-2025-21048Shared CWE-22
CVE-2026-23939Shared CWE-22
CVE-2024-7145Shared CWE-22
CVE-2023-42225Shared CWE-22
CVE-2024-33109Shared CWE-22
CVE-2023-35016Shared CWE-22
CVE-2025-10723Shared CWE-22
CVE-2023-1163Shared CWE-22
CVE-2024-43996Shared CWE-22
CVE-2024-48510Shared CWE-22

Affected Assets

ethyca
fides
≤ 2.15.1

Mitigating Controls

Control response

Prevent
Stop it (NIST 800-53)

Detect
Catch it (NIST detect / respond)

Harden
Shrink the surface (DISA STIG)

Validate
Prove the fix (OWASP ASVS)
  • V5.3.2

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

addresses: CWE-22

Validates pathnames and filenames to prevent traversal outside intended directories.

Mitigating Controls (NIST CSF 2.0) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→CSF cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

PR.PS-02 partial match
prevents

Patching/maintenance can remediate known path-traversal flaws in deployed software (partial prevention of exploitability) but does nothing to stop the coding defect from being introduced in the first place.

PR.AA-05 none match
prevents

PR.AA-05 defines and reviews access policies but does not address code-level pathname neutralization, so neither direction prevents CWE-22.

Mitigating Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A) AI

Derived directly from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry via our AI-authored CWE→ISO cross-walk (authority under review) — links open the control.

finds

Security testing in development catches path traversal via static/dynamic analysis.

prevents

Secure SDLC mandates input validation and path sanitization that directly prevent path traversal.

prevents

Application security requirements include rules for safe file handling and canonicalization.

prevents

Secure architecture principles require least-privilege file access and directory isolation.

prevents

Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe path construction and mandate safe APIs.

mitigates

Information access restriction limits which files an application may read or write.

References