Raw vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:LSummary
CVE-2026-40090 is a high-severity Path Traversal (CWE-22) vulnerability in Lfprojects Zarf. Its CVSS base score is 7.1 (High).
Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked at the 25th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.
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.
Deeper analysis AI-assisted summary
Synthesised by an AI model from the NVD description and linked references — a reading aid, not an authoritative source.
CVE-2026-40090 is an arbitrary file write vulnerability affecting Zarf, an airgap-native package manager for Kubernetes. The issue resides in the `zarf package inspect sbom` and `zarf package inspect documentation` subcommands in versions 0.23.0 through 0.74.1. These subcommands construct output file paths by joining a user-controlled output directory with the package's Metadata.Name field, which is read directly from the untrusted package's zarf.yaml manifest. Although Metadata.Name is validated with a regex during package creation, an attacker can unarchive a package, modify this field to include path traversal sequences like `../../etc/cron.d/malicious` or absolute paths like `/home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys`, and include corresponding files in SBOMs.tar, enabling writes to arbitrary filesystem locations within the permissions of the user running the command.
An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by crafting a malicious Zarf package and tricking a victim into inspecting it with the affected subcommands. Exploitation requires no privileges (PR:N) and user interaction (UI:R), such as a user running the inspect command on an untrusted package provided via network (AV:N). Successful exploitation allows the attacker to write arbitrary, attacker-controlled content to sensitive locations on the victim's filesystem, potentially leading to persistence (e.g., adding cron jobs or SSH keys), with high integrity impact (I:H) and low availability impact (A:L).
The vulnerability has been addressed in Zarf version 0.74.2. Official advisories, including the GitHub security advisory at GHSA-pj97-4p9w-gx3q and the related pull request at #4793, detail the fix and recommend upgrading to the patched version to mitigate the path traversal issue (CWE-22).
OWASP Top 10 for Web (2025)
EU & UK References
- 🇪🇺 ENISA EUVD: EUVD-2026-22814
Vulnerability Data
Zarf is an Airgap Native Packager Manager for Kubernetes. Versions 0.23.0 through 0.74.1 contain an arbitrary file write vulnerability in the zarf package inspect sbom and zarf package inspect documentation subcommands. These subcommands output file paths are constructed by joining…
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a user-controlled output directory with the package's Metadata.Name field read directly from the untrusted package's zarf.yaml manifest. Although Metadata.Name is validated against a regex on package creation, an attacker can unarchive a package to modify the Metadata.Name field to contain path traversal sequences such as ../../etc/cron.d/malicious or absolute paths like /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys, along with the corresponding files inside SBOMS.tar. This allows writing attacker-controlled content to arbitrary filesystem locations within the permissions of the user running the inspect command. This issue has been fixed in version 0.74.2.
- CWE(s)
Related Threats
MITRE ATT&CK Enterprise Techniques
CVEs Like This One
Affected Assets
Mitigating Controls
Control response
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V5.3.2
Mitigating Controls (NIST 800-53 r5) AI
Enforces the intended directory access authorizations that path traversal would otherwise bypass.
Input validation directly neutralizes special path elements before pathname construction occurs.
Least privilege reduces the impact of any unauthorized file access obtained via traversal.
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.