Vulnerability · Published May 28, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-44885Portainer: Path traversal in backup archive extraction allows arbitrary file write
Medium 5.5
In plain English
A medium-severity path traversal in portainer from portainer. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.6% (higher than 49% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
Portainer Community Edition is a lightweight service delivery platform for containerized applications that can be used to manage Docker, Swarm, Kubernetes and ACI environments. From 2.33.0 to before 2.33.8, Portainer's backup restore feature accepts a .tar.gz archive and extracts it to a target directory on the server. The extraction function (ExtractTarGz in api/archive/targz.go) constructed output paths using filepath.Clean(filepath.Join(outputDirPath, header.Name)). This combination does not prevent directory traversal — a tar entry named ../../etc/cron.d/evil resolves to a path outside the extraction root, so a crafted archive can write files to arbitrary locations on the server filesystem. This vulnerability is fixed in 2.33.8.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/portainer/portainer | 2.33.8 | GHSA-m8fg-67j7-cx4v |
| Go | github.com/portainer/portainer | no fix listed | GO-2026-5498 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-22 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:L
References
- https://github.com/portainer/portainer/security/advisories/GHSA-m8fg-67j7-cx4v x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/portainer/portainer-suite/pull/1875 x_refsource_MISC