GHSA-gcj8-76p4-g2fq · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: maven — Apache PDFBox Examples: Path Traversal in PDFBox ExtractEmbeddedFiles Example Code
Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') vulnerability in Apache PDFBox Examples. This issue affects the ExtractEmbeddedFiles example in Apache PDFBox: from 2.0.24 through 2.0.36, from 3.0.0 through 3.0.7. Users are recommended to update to version 2.0.37 or 3.0.8 once available. Until then, they should apply the fix provided in GitHub PR 427. The ExtractEmbeddedFiles example contained a path traversal vulnerability (CWE-22) mentioned in CVE-2026-23907. However the change in the releases 2.0.36 and 3.0.7 is flawed because it doesn't consider the file path separator. Because of that, a user having writing rights on /home/ABC could be victim to a malicious PDF resulting in a write attempt to any path starting with /home/ABC, e.g. "/home/ABCDEF". Users who have copied this example into their production code should apply the mentioned change. The example has been changed accordingly and is available in the project repository.
Conclusion & alert: CVE-2026-33929 is rated Low Risk (34.5/100): CVSS Medium severity, with low exploitation likelihood (EPSS 0.26%). Mandatory action: Monitor for updates and reassess as exploit intelligence or EPSS changes.
Risk is dynamic; we continuously reassess and refresh what is shown on this page as upstream context changes.
EPSS lead: Daily EPSS estimates relative likelihood of exploitation; percentile ranks this CVE among scored vulnerabilities (higher = more severe relative rank).
| # | Date | Old EPSS score | New EPSS score | Delta (New - Old) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2026-05-16 | 0.21% | 0.26% | +0.05% |
| 2 | 2026-04-21 | 0.02% | 0.21% | +0.19% |
| 3 | 2026-04-14 | — | 0.02% | — |
Full EPSS history (3 records total)
CVSS metrics for this CVE.
| Base score | Version | Severity | Vector | Exploitability | Impact | Score source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4.3 | 3.1 | MEDIUM |
|
2.8 | 1.4 | 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0 |
GHSA-gcj8-76p4-g2fq · Severity: medium · Ecosystem: maven — Apache PDFBox Examples: Path Traversal in PDFBox ExtractEmbeddedFiles Example Code
| vendor | priority | summary | link |
|---|---|---|---|
debian
|
unimportant | CVE-2026-33929 unimportant priority: Debian including 2 source packages (libpdfbox-java, libpdfbox2-java), 10 status rows across 5 suites (bookworm, bullseye, forky, sid, trixie): open 10. | https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2026-33929 |
redhat
|
medium | — | https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-33929 |
suse
|
medium | — | https://www.suse.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-33929/ |
ubuntu
|
medium | CVE-2026-33929 medium priority: Ubuntu including 2 source packages (libpdfbox-java, libpdfbox2-java), 13 status rows across 7 suites (bionic, focal, jammy, noble, questing, upstream, xenial): needs-triage 13. | https://ubuntu.com/security/CVE-2026-33929 |
| URL | Tags |
|---|---|
| https://github.com/apache/pdfbox/pull/427/changes | Patch |
| https://lists.apache.org/thread/j8l07tgzy9dm8d8n0f3c45h7zg7t3ld6 | Mailing List Vendor Advisory |
| https://lists.apache.org/thread/op3lyx1ngzy4qycn06l6hljyf28ff0zs | Mailing List |