CVE-2019-9686

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2019-03-11 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-22

Description

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.

Affected products

Pacman Project Pacman: before 5.1.3 — fixed in 5.1.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Pacman Project Pacman 5.1.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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