CVE-2026-35363: uutils coreutils protection bypass in rm utility

CVE-2026-35363 · Severity: medium · CVSS 5.6 · Published 2026-04-22

A vulnerability in the uutils coreutils 'rm' utility fails to protect the current directory from accidental deletion when trailing slashes are used in the command. While the tool normally prevents users from deleting the current directory ('.'), it fails to recognize variants like './' or './//', leading to the silent recursive deletion of all files and subdirectories. This can result in significant data loss, and a misleading error message may prevent users from realizing the damage in time to attempt data recovery.

Technologies: Uutils Coreutils. Vendors: crates.io, Uutils.

Quick answers

Is CVE-2026-35363 exploited in the wild?
No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-35363 being exploited in the wild.
How severe is CVE-2026-35363?
Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 5.6, published 22 April 2026.
Which products and versions are affected?
uu_rm (crates.io) < 0.6.0, SEMVER:introduced=0,fixed=0.6.0.
Is there a fix for CVE-2026-35363?
Yes. uu_rm (crates.io): upgrade to 0.6.0 or later. Junglewise finds every place you run it, drafts the upgrade and applies it once you approve.
How is CVE-2026-35363 attacked?
It is attacked with local access, in a software library.
Am I affected by CVE-2026-35363?
Check whether you run uu_rm (crates.io) or Uutils Coreutils at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.

How to fix

  • uu_rm (crates.io): upgrade to 0.6.0 or later
    cargo update -p uu_rm

Technical details

A path traversal and protection mechanism failure exists in the 'uu_rm' package of uutils coreutils. The 'clean_trailing_slashes' function normalizes paths like './//' to './', but the 'path_is_current_or_parent_directory' function only checks for literal '.' or '..' (and their absolute variants), failing to account for trailing slashes. Consequently, 'rm -rf ./' bypasses the safeguard that prevents deletion of the current directory, recursively deleting all contents before returning a misleading 'Invalid input' error. This issue was fixed in version 0.6.0 by updating the path validation logic to handle trailing-slash variants.

Affected products

  • uutils coreutils uu_rm < 0.6.0

Identifiers

  • CVE-2026-35363
  • GHSA-89p7-7cq3-hhr2

Timeline

  • 2025-12-20: disclosed: Initial issue opened on GitHub
  • 2026-01-20: other: Security assessment prepared for Canonical by Zellic
  • 2026-05-30: patched: Fix published in version 0.6.0
  • 2026-07-06: advisory: GitHub Advisory published

References

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