CVE-2023-7207 — Debian's cpio contains a path traversal vulnerability

Debian's cpio contains a path traversal vulnerability. This issue was introduced by reverting CVE-2015-1197 patches which had caused a regression in --no-absolute-filenames. Upstream has since provided a proper fix to --no-absolute-filenames.

01What is this vulnerability?

Debian's cpio contains a path traversal vulnerability. This issue was introduced by reverting CVE-2015-1197 patches which had caused a regression in --no-absolute-filenames. Upstream has since provided a proper fix to --no-absolute-filenames.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
Debian	Debian cpio	0

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

08Timeline

• Published: 2024-01-05T00:39:49.690Z
• Last modified: 2025-05-07T20:19:53.516Z

09References

• git.savannah.gnu.org — https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/cpio.git/commit/?id=376d663340a9dc91c91a5849e5…
• bugs.debian.org — https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1059163
• www.openwall.com — https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/12/21/8
• cve.mitre.org — https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2023-7207
• www.openwall.com — http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/01/05/1