Vulnerability · Published Aug 5, 2026 · Assigned by TuranSec
CVE-2026-71209audiobookshelf - %2F Encoding Discrepancy Bypasses Cover/Image Auth Exemption Regex, Enabling Unauthenticated Path Traversal
High 7.5
In plain English
A high-severity path traversal in audiobookshelf from advplyr. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 2.2% (higher than 83% of all known vulnerabilities). Ready-made attack tooling exists: Nuclei.
Official description
audiobookshelf's authentication-exemption check (server/routers/Auth.js) matches unauthenticated-allowed GET routes against req.path via a regex requiring a literal /items/:id/cover or /authors/:id/image shape, where req.path retains %2F sequences URL-encoded. CacheManager.handleCoverCache then joins this decoded value into a cache file path and streams the result before any database-backed ownership check.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| advplyr | audiobookshelf | 2.19.1 – through 2.35.1 |
Weakness: CWE-22 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
References
- https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf/security/advisories/GHSA-pg8v-5jcv-wrvw third-party-advisory
- https://github.com/advplyr/audiobookshelf third-party-advisory