CVE-2026-35363
mediumpriority · track · 0EPSS 0.002 · 6 %ileEUUSEPSS · scored 2026-10-27
A vulnerability in the rm utility of uutils coreutils allows the bypass of safeguard mechanisms intended to protect the current directory. While the utility correctly refuses to delete . or .., it fails to recognize equivalent paths with trailing slashes, such as ./ or .///. An accidental or malicious execution of rm -rf ./ results in the silent recursive deletion of all contents within the current directory. The command further obscures the data loss by reporting a misleading 'Invalid input' error, which may cause users to miss the critical window for data recovery.
cvss
Technical severity, 0–10. One row per scoring source.
base score 0–10 · higher = more severe · hover a vector to decode
ssvc
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weaknesses
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affected products (3)
Products and version ranges known to be affected.
advisories (2)
Vendor and ecosystem advisories describing this.
- GHSA-89p7-7cq3-hhr2rm: 'rm -rf ./' (and ./// variants) silently deletes current directory contents, bypassing dot protection2026-07-06ghsa · osvUS
`rm -rf .` is correctly refused, but `clean_trailing_slashes` normalizes `.///` to `./` while `path_is_current_or_parent_directory` only matches `.`/`..` (and `/.`/`/..`), not `./` or `../`. So `rm -rf ./` recursively deletes the directory's contents and then prints a misleading `cannot remove './': Invalid input`. **Impact:** all files/subdirectories in the current directory are silently deleted; the misleading error makes users miss the recovery window. Recommendation: handle trailing-slash variants in `path_is_current_or_parent_directory`. **Remediation:** Acknowledged by Canonical; fixed in commit d0e5af23. --- _Reported by Zellic in the *uutils coreutils Program Security Assessment* (prepared for Canonical, Jan 20 2026), audited commit `3a07ffc5a9bd4c283e75afa548ba1f1957bad242`. Finding 3.60. Credit: Zellic._ _Upstream tracking issue: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/9749 · CVE-2026-35363_
- GHSA-vchc-9ggh-3236Duplicate Advisory: uutils coreutils has a Path Traversal issue2026-04-22ghsa · osvUS
### Duplicate Advisory This advisory has been withdrawn because it is a duplicate of GHSA-89p7-7cq3-hhr2. This link is maintained to preserve external references. ### Original Description A vulnerability in the rm utility of uutils coreutils allows the bypass of safeguard mechanisms intended to protect the current directory. While the utility correctly refuses to delete . or .., it fails to recognize equivalent paths with trailing slashes, such as ./ or .///. An accidental or malicious execution of rm -rf ./ results in the silent recursive deletion of all contents within the current directory. The command further obscures the data loss by reporting a misleading 'Invalid input' error, which may cause users to miss the critical window for data recovery.
also known as (4)
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sources
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references (3)
External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.
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