CVE-2026-33929
Published: 14 April 2026
Summary
CVE-2026-33929 is a medium-severity Path Traversal (CWE-22) vulnerability in Apache Pdfbox. Its CVSS base score is 4.3 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Ingress Tool Transfer (T1105); ranked at the 49.5th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-22229
Vulnerability details
Improper 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…
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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.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Path traversal enables arbitrary file write via malicious PDF (T1105 Ingress Tool Transfer) and client-side exploitation on PDF open (T1203).
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
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.
Validates pathnames and filenames to prevent traversal outside intended directories.