Quantum Secular Labs / Blog / Advisories
CVE-2026-74764: Pandora: Path traversal
CVE-2026-74764 is rated critical with a CVSS v4.0 base score of 10.0. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication, without any user interaction. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available.
Vulnerability description
Pandora contains a path traversal vulnerability in its TAR archive extraction functionality. When processing a submitted TAR archive, the extractor passed archive member names directly to Python's tarfile.TarFile.extract() without applying an extraction filter. An attacker able to submit a specially crafted TAR archive containing malicious member paths, such as paths using ../ sequences or absolute paths, could cause extracted files to be written outside the intended extraction directory. This may allow the attacker to overwrite files accessible to the Pandora worker process and could potentially result in application compromise, arbitrary code execution, or denial of service depending on the files targeted and the privileges of the Pandora process. The vulnerability is corrected by using Python's filter='data' extraction filter, which rejects or sanitizes dangerous TAR members, including paths that escape the destination directory and unsafe link targets. The weakness corresponds to MITRE's general path traversal category, which includes archive extraction cases where attacker-controlled filenames cause files to be written outside the intended directory.
Severity breakdown
CVSS v4.0 10.0: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:L/E:X/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
- Attack vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network.
- Attack complexity: Low. No special conditions; the attack can be repeated reliably.
- Attack requirements: None. No deployment or execution conditions are needed.
- Privileges required: None. No account or prior access is needed.
- User interaction: None. No action from any user is needed.
- Confidentiality impact (vulnerable system): High. Total loss of confidentiality.
- Integrity impact (vulnerable system): High. Total loss of integrity.
- Availability impact (vulnerable system): High. Total loss of availability.
- Confidentiality impact (subsequent systems): High. Total loss of confidentiality on other systems.
- Integrity impact (subsequent systems): High. Total loss of integrity on other systems.
- Availability impact (subsequent systems): Low. Reduced availability of other systems.
Underlying weakness
CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
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.