uutils coreutils has a Path Traversal issue

Description

A vulnerability in the rm utility of uutils coreutils allows the bypass of safeguard mechanisms intended to protect the current directory. While the utility correctly refuses to delete . or .., it fails to recognize equivalent paths with trailing slashes, such as ./ or .///. An accidental or malicious execution of rm -rf ./ results in the silent recursive deletion of all contents within the current directory. The command further obscures the data loss by reporting a misleading 'Invalid input' error, which may cause users to miss the critical window for data recovery.

Basic information

Type
reviewed
Severity
medium
Advisory on GitHub
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Repository advisory
Source code
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Published (advisory)
2026-04-22 18:31:45 UTC
Updated
2026-04-30 17:30:56 UTC
GitHub reviewed
2026-04-30 17:30:54 UTC
NVD published
2026-04-22

EPSS Score

Score Percentile
0.01% 0.48%

CVSS Scores

Base score Version Severity Vector
5.6 3.1
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L Click to expand
Attack vector (AV:L)
They already need access on the box, or another person has to do something wrong; it’s not a remote drive-by.
Attack complexity (AC:L)
Once they can reach the bug, pulling it off is straightforward—no weird race conditions or rare setup.
Privileges required (PR:L)
A normal user session is enough; they don’t have to be admin.
User interaction (UI:R)
A real person has to do something—click, install, enable—otherwise it doesn’t land.
Scope (S:U)
Damage stays in the same “trust bubble” as the broken component—no big spill into unrelated systems.
Confidentiality (C:N)
Doesn’t really leak secrets in a meaningful way.
Integrity (I:H)
They could widely tamper with or forge data—trust in the data is badly hurt.
Availability (A:L)
Might cause slowdowns, glitches, or partial disruption—not a full brick.

Identifiers

CWEs

CWE id Name
CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

Affected packages (1)

Vulnerable version ranges and first patched releases as published by GitHub.

Ecosystem Package Vulnerable range First patched Vulnerable functions
rust coreutils <= 0.8.0

References

cvelogic Threat Intelligence