Cyber Resilience

CVE-2026-7020

Path Traversal in Ollama 0.20.0 – 0.20.2

Public PoCPath Traversal
Published
26 April 2026
Modified
06 May 2026
CVSS Score v4 2.9
Click a component to see what it means
Raw vectorCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:H/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:N/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:P/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
EPSS Score 0.0091 57th percentile
Risk Priority 27 floored blend · peak EPSS

Summary

CVE-2026-7020 is a low-severity Path Traversal (CWE-22) vulnerability in Ollama Ollama. Its CVSS base score is 2.9 (Low).

Operationally, exploitation aligns with the MITRE ATT&CK technique Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190); ranked in the top 43% of CVEs by exploit likelihood; it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog; a public proof-of-concept is referenced.

This vulnerability is AI-related — categorised as NLP and Transformers; in the Supply Chain and Deployment risk domain.

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

Vulnerability Data

A security flaw has been discovered in Ollama up to 0.20.2. This affects the function digestToPath of the file x/imagegen/transfer/transfer.go of the component Tensor Model Transfer Handler. The manipulation of the argument digest results in path traversal. The attack may…

more

be performed from remote. This attack is characterized by high complexity. The exploitability is reported as difficult. The exploit has been released to the public and may be used for attacks. The vendor was contacted early about this disclosure but did not respond in any way.

CWE(s)

AI Security AnalysisAI

AI Category
NLP and Transformers
Risk Domain
Supply Chain and Deployment
OWASP Top 10 for LLMs 2025
None mapped
Classification Reason
Matched keywords: ollama

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-2024-45436Same product: Ollama Ollama
CVE-2024-37032Same product: Ollama Ollama
CVE-2024-39722Same product: Ollama Ollama
CVE-2026-42249Same product: Ollama Ollama
CVE-2025-6854Shared CWE-22
CVE-2025-6853Shared CWE-22
CVE-2026-4944Shared CWE-22
CVE-2026-43624Shared CWE-22
CVE-2026-41863Shared CWE-22
CVE-2026-34070Shared CWE-22

Affected Assets

ollama
ollama
0.20.0 — 0.20.2

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

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.

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