Zarf has a Path Traversal via Malicious Package Metadata.Name — Arbitrary File Write
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- Required
- Attack complexity
- Low
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · High · Low
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and GitHub.
Summary
Zarf is an Airgap Native Packager Manager for Kubernetes. Versions 0.23.0 through 0.74.1 contain an arbitrary file write vulnerability in the zarf package inspect sbom and zarf package inspect documentation subcommands. These subcommands output file paths are constructed by joining a user-controlled output directory with the package's Metadata.Name field read directly from the untrusted package's zarf.yaml manifest. Although Metadata.Name is validated against a regex on package creation, an attacker can unarchive a package to modify the Metadata.Name field to contain path traversal sequences such as ../../etc/cron.d/malicious or absolute paths like /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys, along with the corresponding files inside SBOMS.tar. This allows writing attacker-controlled content to arbitrary filesystem locations within the permissions of the user running the inspect command. This issue has been fixed in version 0.74.2.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Partial
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| zarf-dev | zarf | 0.23.0 to before 0.74.2 | 0.74.2 | Patch available | CNA |
| — | github.com/zarf-dev/zarf (Go) | 0.23.0 to before 0.74.2 | 0.74.2 | Patch available | GHSA-pj97-4p9w-gx3q |
- zarf Vendorzarf-dev Affected 0.23.0 to before 0.74.2 Fixed in 0.74.2 Patch available CNA
- github.com/zarf-dev/zarf (Go) Vendor— Affected 0.23.0 to before 0.74.2 Fixed in 0.74.2 Patch available GHSA-pj97-4p9w-gx3q
Remediation
- Fix · CNA zarf (zarf-dev) Fixed in 0.74.2
- Fix · GHSA-pj97-4p9w-gx3q github.com/zarf-dev/zarf (Go) Fixed in 0.74.2 Advisory →
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-40090
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-pj97-4p9w-gx3q
References
More MLflow Zarf vulnerabilities
- TI-2026-23209 Zarf: Symlink targets in archives are not validated against destination directory CVSS 3.1HIGH 8.2
Sources
- CVE-2026-40090 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-40090 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-pj97-4p9w-gx3q · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
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