CVE Catalog

CVE-2026-118485

HighCVSS 8.1
Published: Updated: Translated: NVD NIST

Exploitation Probability (EPSS)

Low risk
0.56%

47th percentile - higher than 47% of all known CVEs

Summary

Axel Download Accelerator 2.17.14 and earlier performs URL percent-decoding on the output filename after URL parsing, allowing an attacker to embed %2e%2e%2f sequences that survive parsing but decode into directory traversal sequences, enabling writes to arbitrary filesystem paths.

Risk Assessment

An attacker could write malicious files to arbitrary locations, potentially leading to code execution or overwriting critical files.

Recommendation

Update Axel to a version later than 2.17.14 or avoid downloading from untrusted sources.

Related vulnerabilities

Original NVD description (English source)

Axel Download Accelerator 2.17.14 and earlier performs URL percent-decoding (http_decode()) on the output filename after the URL has been parsed and the filename component extracted. This allows an attacker to embed %2e%2e%2f (URL-encoded ../) sequences in the URL path. These sequences survive the URL parser intact (they contain no literal / characters) but are decoded into directory traversal sequences before the output file is opened for writing. As a result, a crafted URL can cause axel to write downloaded content to arbitrary filesystem paths relative to the current working directory.

Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS