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Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2019-9686 json

pacman before 5.1.3 allows directory traversal when installing a remote package via a specified URL "pacman -U <url>" due to an unsanitized…

published 2019-03-11 7 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2019-19052

cvss
8.8
version 3.1, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
3.4%
EPSS 3.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 88%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

pacman before 5.1.3 allows directory traversal when installing a remote package via a specified URL "pacman -U <url>" due to an unsanitized file name received from a Content-Disposition header. pacman renames the downloaded package file to match the name given in this header. However, pacman did not sanitize this name, which may contain slashes, before calling rename(). A malicious server (or a network MitM if downloading over HTTP) can send a Content-Disposition header to make pacman place the file anywhere in the filesystem, potentially leading to arbitrary root code execution. Notably, this bypasses pacman's package signature checking. This occurs in curl_download_internal in lib/libalpm/dload.c.

Patch / fix

  • pacman_project pacman 5.1.3
  • pacman Alpine 3.24, Alpine 3.23, Alpine 3.22 +11 more 5.1.3-r0

alpine advisories ALPINE-CVE-2019-9686

Alpine secdb © Alpine Linux, from https://secdb.alpinelinux.org via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • pacman Arch Linux 5.1.3-1

arch linux advisories AVG-921

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2019-9686 updated cvss 6.3

pacman: directory traversal vulnerability in lib/libalpm/dload.c

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

3.38% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 88% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.1 8.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 9.3 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.