CVE-2026-23907
MediumCVSS 5.3Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Elevated risk57th percentile - higher than 57% of all known CVEs
Summary
The ExtractEmbeddedFiles example in Apache PDFBox (versions 2.0.24–2.0.35 and 3.0.0–3.0.6) has a path traversal vulnerability (CWE-22) because the filename from PDComplexFileSpecification.getFilename() is appended to the extraction path without validation.
Risk Assessment
Risk of writing files to unintended locations, potentially leading to system integrity compromise.
Recommendation
If you have copied this example into production code, review and adjust path validation, preferably using canonical paths and ensuring the extraction path contains the initial path. Also update PDFBox to the latest version.
Other vulnerabilities in Apache PDFBox
See all- CVE-2016-2175High
Apache PDFBox before 1.8.12 and 2.x before 2.0.1 does not properly initialize the XML parsers, allowing context-dependent attackers to conduct XML External Entity (XXE) attacks via a crafted PDF.
- CVE-2026-33929Medium
The ExtractEmbeddedFiles example in Apache PDFBox (versions 2.0.24–2.0.36 and 3.0.0–3.0.7) contains a path traversal vulnerability (CWE-22). The fix in 2.0.36 and 3.0.7 is flawed because it does not consider the file path separator, allowing writes to paths starting with the user's directory, e.g. /home/ABCDEF.
Original NVD description (English source)
This issue affects the ExtractEmbeddedFiles example in Apache PDFBox: from 2.0.24 through 2.0.35, from 3.0.0 through 3.0.6. The ExtractEmbeddedFiles example contains a path traversal vulnerability (CWE-22) because the filename that is obtained from PDComplexFileSpecification.getFilename() is appended to the extraction path. Users who have copied this example into their production code should review it to ensure that the extraction path is acceptable. The example has been changed accordingly, now the initial path and the extraction paths are converted into canonical paths and it is verified that extraction path contains the initial path. The documentation has also been adjusted.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS