Title: Apache Tomcat Directory Traversal Vulnerability Author: Simon Ryeo(bar4mi (at) gmail.com, barami (at) ahnlab.com) Severity: High Impact: Remote File Disclosure Vulnerable Version: prior to 6.0.18 Solution: - Best Choice: Upgrade to 6.0.18 (http://tomcat.apache.org) - Hot fix: Disable allowLinking or do not set URIencoding to utf8 in order to avoid this vulnerability. - Tomcat 5.5.x and 4.1.x Users: The fix will be included in the next releases. Please apply the hot fix until next release. References: - http://tomcat.apache.org/security.html - http://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2008-2938 History: - 07.17.2008: Initiate notify (To Apache Security Team) - 08.02.2008: Responsed this problem fixed and released new version - 08.05.2008: Notify disclosure (To Apache Tomcat Security Team) - 08.10.2008: Responsed with some suggestions. Description As Apache Security Team, this problem occurs because of JAVA side. If your context.xml or server.xml allows 'allowLinking'and 'URIencoding' as 'UTF-8', an attacker can obtain your important system files.(e.g. /etc/passwd) Exploit If your webroot directory has three depth(e.g /usr/local/wwwroot), An attacker can access arbitrary files as below. (Proof-of-concept) http://www.target.com/%c0%ae%c0%ae/%c0%ae%c0%ae/%c0%ae%c0%ae/foo/bar