CVE-2025-53358 kotaemon Vulnerable to Path Traversal via Link Upload
Attackers can traverse directories to exfiltrate sensitive files via unvalidated local file paths in the document upload feature.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Any signed-in user
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- None listed
What is CVE-2025-53358?
CVE-2025-53358 is a medium-severity path traversal vulnerability in Cinnamon kotaemon, published on 2 Jul 2025. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, with no action from the victim.
Official description
kotaemon is an open-source RAG-based tool for document comprehension. From versions 0.10.6 and prior, in libs/ktem/ktem/index/file/ui.py, the index_fn method accepts both URLs and local file paths without validation. The pipeline streams these paths directly and stores them, enabling attackers to traverse directories (e.g. ../../../../../.env) and exfiltrate sensitive files. This issue has been patched via commit 37cdc28, in version 0.10.7 which has not been made public at time of publication.
Weakness: CWE-22
Which versions are affected by CVE-2025-53358?
How do I fix CVE-2025-53358?
No fix has been published for CVE-2025-53358 yet. Limit exposure of the affected software until one is available.
Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.
Is CVE-2025-53358 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2025-53358 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-jw4w-xcvf-jq5x.