CVE-2026-76844

Summary

webpack-dev-middleware resolves a request to a local file in getFilenameFromUrl by testing the request pathname against a traversal guard and then slicing it at a fixed character offset. The guard, UP_PATH_REGEXP applied to path.normalize(./${pathname}), only matches ".." that stands as a whole path segment, while the containment test is the string comparison pathname.startsWith(publicPathPathname) and the file path is built as path.join(outputPath, pathname.slice(publicPathPathname.length)). When the configured publicPath has no trailing slash, a request such as GET /assets../.env against publicPath /assets yields the pathname /assets../.env, whose only dot-dot sits inside the segment "assets.." and so passes the guard, but the offset slice cuts within that segment and hands "../.env" to path.join, resolving one directory above outputPath. Reading a file from that path requires the middleware to be backed by the physical filesystem, which happens when writeToDisk is true or a custom outputFileSystem is supplied, since the default memfs volume holds only build output. Traversal depth is limited to a single directory because a separately delimited dot-dot segment is collapsed during URL parsing before the guard runs. The default publicPath value of "auto" resolves to "/" and is not affected. This is an incomplete fix for CVE-2024-29180: the guard and offset slice were introduced by that fix and are present in every release from 5.3.4, 6.1.2 and 7.1.0 onward.

Affected Software

Weaknesses

• CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')

References

• https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-middleware
• https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-middleware/blob/v8.1.1/src/middleware.js
• https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-wr3j-pwj9-hqq6
• https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/webpack-dev-middleware-path-traversal-via-offset-slice-on-a-non-slash-terminated-publicpath

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