CVE-2026-40090: Zarf has a Path Traversal via Malicious Package Metadata.Name — Arbitrary File Write
The package inspect sbom and package inspect documentation subcommands construct output file paths by joining a user-controlled output directory with the package’s Metadata.Name field, which is attacker-controlled data read from the package archive. The Metadata.Name field is validated against a regex on create, ^[a-z0-9][a-z0-9\-]*$, however a malicious user could unarchive a package to change the .Metadata.Name field and the files inside the SBOMS.tar. This would lead to arbitrary file write in a location of the attackers choosing.
Neither location sanitizes or validates the package name before using it in the file path.
SBOM inspection:
outputPath := filepath.Join(o.outputDir, pkgLayout.Pkg.Metadata.Name)
err = pkgLayout.GetSBOM(ctx, outputPath)
Documentation inspection (line 1219):
outputPath := filepath.Join(o.outputDir, fmt.Sprintf("%s-documentation", pkgLayout.Pkg.Metadata.Name))
return pkgLayout.GetDocumentation(ctx, outputPath, o.keys)
pkgLayout.Pkg.Metadata.Name is read directly from the untrusted package’s zarf.yaml manifest. An attacker can craft a malicious Zarf package where Metadata.Name contains path traversal sequences or root paths such as ../../etc/cron.d/malicious or /home/user/.ssh/authorized_keys.
References
Code Behaviors & Features
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