CVE-2020-12278 Path traversal in n/a

What is CVE-2020-12278?

CVE-2020-12278 is a critical path traversal vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 27 Apr 2020. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

An issue was discovered in libgit2 before 0.28.4 and 0.9x before 0.99.0. path.c mishandles equivalent filenames that exist because of NTFS Alternate Data Streams. This may allow remote code execution when cloning a repository. This issue is similar to CVE-2019-1352.

Weakness: CWE-706

Which versions are affected by CVE-2020-12278?

It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Libgit2 Libgit2.

How do I fix CVE-2020-12278?

Upgrade to a fixed version.

Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.

Is CVE-2020-12278 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2020-12278 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2020-12278, GHSA-5wph-8frv-58vj, GHSA-w32v-c4gg-xc8p, JLSEC-2025-182, UBUNTU-CVE-2020-12278.