CVE-2022-41956: Autolab is vulnerable to file disclosure via remote handin feature

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2023-01-14 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Autolab is a course management service, initially developed by a team of students at Carnegie Mellon University, that enables instructors to offer autograded programming assignments to their students over the Web. A file disclosure vulnerability was discovered in Autolab's remote handin feature, whereby users are able to hand-in assignments using paths outside their submission directory. Users can then view the submission to view the file's contents. The vulnerability has been patched in version 2.10.0. As a workaround, ensure that the field for the remote handin feature is empty (Edit Assessment > Advanced > Remote handin path), and that you are not running Autolab as `root` (or any user that has write access to `/`). Alternatively, disable the remote handin feature if it is unneeded by replacing the body of `local_submit` in `app/controllers/assessment/handin.rb` with `render(plain: "Feature disabled", status: :bad_request) && return`.

Affected products

Autolab: before 2.10.0 — fixed in 2.10.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Autolab 2.10.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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