Executive brief
IBM compliance-trestle is a library used to manage compliance information. A security flaw in how it handles remote files allows an attacker to trick the system into writing malicious files to any location on the server's hard drive. This could allow an attacker to take full control of the system, steal data, or disrupt operations by overwriting critical configuration files or injecting malicious commands.
Technical details
A path traversal vulnerability exists in the HTTPSFetcher and SFTPFetcher components of compliance-trestle (specifically in trestle/core/remote/cache.py). The library constructs local cache file paths using unsanitized components from remote URLs, preserving '../' sequences. An attacker can provide a malicious OSCAL profile referencing a URL with traversal sequences, causing the fetched content to be written outside the intended cache directory. This can be leveraged for arbitrary file write and subsequent Remote Code Execution (RCE) by overwriting sensitive files like cron jobs, SSH authorized_keys, or Python modules. The issue is fixed in versions 4.0.3 and 3.12.2.
Affected products
- IBM compliance-trestle >= 4.0.0, <= 4.0.2
Timeline
- 2026-04-30: disclosed: Vulnerability identified in version 4.0.2
- 2026-05-27: advisory: GitHub Advisory GHSA-g3vg-vx23-3858 published
- 2026-05-27: patched: Fixed in versions 4.0.3 and 3.12.2