CAPEC™ 126: Path Traversal

Description

An adversary uses path manipulation methods to exploit insufficient input validation of a target to obtain access to data that should be not be retrievable by ordinary well-formed requests. A typical variety of this attack involves specifying a path to a desired file together with dot-dot-slash characters, resulting in the file access API or function traversing out of the intended directory structure and into the root file system. By replacing or modifying the expected path information the access function or API retrieves the file desired by the attacker. These attacks either involve the attacker providing a complete path to a targeted file or using control characters (e.g. path separators (/ or and/or dots (.)) to reach desired directories or files.

Source: CAPEC™ 126

ASVS (5.0): 1.1.1, 1.3.3, 1.5.3, 10.2.3, 13.2.2, 16.3.2, 16.3.3, 16.5.1, 2.1.1, 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 5.1.1, 5.2.1, 5.2.2, 5.2.3, 5.2.5, 5.3.1, 5.3.2, 5.3.3, 5.4.1, 5.4.2, 5.4.3, 8.1.1

Github logo View source on GitHub

OWASP Cornucopia

OWASP Cornucopia is a mechanism in the form of a card game to assist software development teams identify security requirements in Agile, conventional and formal development processes. It is language, platform and technology-agnostic, and is free to use. OWASP Cornucopia is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license, so you can copy, distribute and transmit the work, and you can adapt it, and use it commercially, but all provided that you attribute the work and if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar licence to this one.

© 2012-2025 OWASP Foundation. The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is a nonprofit foundation that works to improve the security of software.