CVE-2026-48784: Symfony: UrlGenerator Dot-Segment Encoding Skips Every Other Chained `../` or `./` → Generated URL Collapses Off-Route Under RFC 3986 Normalization
Symfony\Component\Routing\Generator\UrlGenerator::doGenerate() percent-encodes . and .. path segments so that the generated URL still resolves to the originating route after RFC 3986 §5.2.4 dot-segment removal (which strict RFC-3986 consumers — routers, reverse proxies, HTTP clients — perform before percent-decoding).
The encoding was implemented as strtr($url, ['/../' => '/%2E%2E/', '/./' => '/%2E/']) plus a trailing-segment fixup. strtr advances past the trailing / of each match, so the next dot-segment in a chained sequence was left unescaped:
| Input | Output (before fix) | Expected |
|---|---|---|
/../../../ | /%2E%2E/../%2E%2E/ | /%2E%2E/%2E%2E/%2E%2E/ |
/foo/../../../bar | /foo/%2E%2E/../%2E%2E/bar | /foo/%2E%2E/%2E%2E/%2E%2E/bar |
When a route exposes a parameter constrained by a permissive requirement (.+, .*, or similar) that accepts dots and slashes, attacker-controlled chained .. or . segments produce a generated URL that, under strict RFC 3986 normalization, collapses to a different path than the originating route. The Twig path() / url() helpers and any server-side use of UrlGenerator are affected. Same class of route round-trip integrity issue as CVE-2026-45065.
Note: WHATWG-conformant browsers treat %2E/%2E%2E as dot-segments during URL parsing, so the encoding never protected browser-side traversal. The defense exists for RFC-3986-conformant consumers; restoring it for chained segments closes the gap there.
References
- github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/symfony/routing/CVE-2026-48784.yaml
- github.com/FriendsOfPHP/security-advisories/blob/master/symfony/symfony/CVE-2026-48784.yaml
- github.com/advisories/GHSA-h5x3-xfc9-m39h
- github.com/symfony/symfony/commit/4b63c3a3f7af04ecd79c89a594b0b02a01990b1d
- github.com/symfony/symfony/security/advisories/GHSA-h5x3-xfc9-m39h
- nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-48784
- symfony.com/cve-2026-48784
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