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Fencer Vulns
medium 4.3

CVE-2026-33929 json

Apache PDFBox Examples: Path Traversal in PDFBox ExtractEmbeddedFiles Example Code

published 2026-04-14 6 mo ago modified 2026-10-26 13 d ago also EUVD-2026-22229 , GHSA-gcj8-76p4-g2fq

cvss
4.3
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 53%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • maven org.apache.pdfbox:pdfbox-examples 2.0.37, 3.0.8
  • apache-pdfbox SLES for SAP applications 16.0, SLES 16.0 2.0.36-160000.1.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2026:22088-1

  • apache-pdfbox openSUSE Leap 16.0 2.0.36-160000.1.1
  • apache-pdfbox openSUSE Tumbleweed 2.0.36-1.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2026:20923-1openSUSE-SU-2026:10550-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2026-33929 updated cvss 6.6

Apache PDFBox: Apache PDFBox: Arbitrary file write via path traversal in ExtractEmbeddedFiles example

  • Red Hat build of Apache Camel for Spring Boot 4 pdfbox Red Hat Data Grid 8 pdfbox Red Hat Fuse 7 pdfbox Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 7 pdfbox Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 8 pdfbox Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Expansion Pack pdfbox
    affected: no fix available “Fix deferred”
  • Red Hat AMQ Broker 7 pdfbox Red Hat streams for Apache Kafka 2 pdfbox
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
partial
Assessed
6 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.71% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 53% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CISA ADP 3.1 4.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
GitHub 3.1 4.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N
CNA 3.1 4.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
maven org.apache.pdfbox:pdfbox-examples
>=2.0.24, <2.0.37
>=3.0.0, <3.0.8
2.0.37
3.0.8

Affected products

  • Apache Software Foundation Apache PDFBox Examples

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

CPEs and fixed versions use Anchore's correction of NVD's data: Added CPE configurations because not yet analyzed by NVD.