Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:LSummary
CVE-2026-34978 is a medium-severity Path Traversal (CWE-22) vulnerability in Openprinting Cups. Its CVSS base score is 6.5 (Medium).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Data Destruction (T1485); ranked at the 33th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.
The strongest mitigations our analysis identified map to AC-3 (Access Enforcement) and SI-10 (Information Input Validation) — see the control section below for these in your framework.
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-18884
Vulnerability Data
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…
more
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.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise TechniquesAI
Why these techniques?
Path traversal enables remote overwrite of critical state files (job.cache), directly causing destruction of queued print jobs.
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Rejects the malicious ../ sequence in notify-recipient-uri before the RSS notifier performs the file write.
Enforces that the lp process may only write inside the intended CacheDir/rss subtree, blocking the traversal.
Limits the lp account to the minimum privileges needed, eliminating the group-writable CacheDir vector used to clobber job.cache.
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.
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 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.
Security testing in development catches path traversal via static/dynamic analysis.
Secure SDLC mandates input validation and path sanitization that directly prevent path traversal.
Application security requirements include rules for safe file handling and canonicalization.
Secure architecture principles require least-privilege file access and directory isolation.
Secure coding standards explicitly forbid unsafe path construction and mandate safe APIs.
Information access restriction limits which files an application may read or write.