CVE-2026-78381
Received
Received - Intake
Path Traversal in RansomLook Group Posts
Vulnerability report for CVE-2026-78381, including description, CVSS score, EPSS score, affected products, exploitability, helpful resources, and attack-flow context.
Publication date: 2026-08-24
Last updated on: 2026-08-24
Assigner: CIRCL
Description
Description
RansomLook contains a path traversal vulnerability in the handling of the screen field associated with group posts. The GroupPost.get API handler concatenates the database-controlled screen value directly with the application's source/ directory and opens the resulting path without verifying that the resolved file remains within the intended directory.
Because the screen field is free-form and can be populated either through the administrative post editor or through data imported from a remote RansomLook instance, a malicious upstream instance can provide traversal sequences such as ../config/generic.json. When the affected post is subsequently retrieved through the API, RansomLook resolves and reads the attacker-controlled path and returns the contents of the referenced file Base64-encoded in the API response.
This can allow an attacker (being admin) controlling imported post data to read arbitrary files accessible to the RansomLook process, potentially exposing sensitive configuration data, API credentials, password hashes, or other application secrets. The attack does not require the malicious upstream to possess an account on the affected RansomLook instance.
The vulnerability is addressed by resolving screen paths with os.path.realpath() and verifying that the resolved path remains beneath the application's source/ directory. Validation is performed both when values are written and immediately before files are read. Using canonical paths also prevents traversal through symbolic links that would bypass purely lexical path normalization checks.
CVSS Scores
EPSS Scores
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Meta Information
Affected Vendors & Products
| Vendor | Product | Version / Range |
|---|---|---|
| ransomlook | ransomlook | * |
Helpful Resources
Exploitability
CWE
KEV
| CWE ID | Description |
|---|---|
| CWE-22 | The product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory. |
