wkentaro gdown up to 5.2.1 Archive extractall path traversal

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical was found in wkentaro gdown up to 5.2.1. Affected is the function extractall of the component Archive Handler. Such manipulation leads to path traversal. This vulnerability is listed as CVE-2026-40491. The attack may be performed from remote. There is no available exploit. Upgrading the affected component is advised.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, has been found in wkentaro gdown up to 5.2.1. Affected by this issue is the function extractall of the component Archive Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a path traversal vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-22. The product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory. Impacted is integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

gdown is a Google Drive public file/folder downloader. Versions prior to 5.2.2 are vulnerable to a Path Traversal attack within the extractall functionality. When extracting a maliciously crafted ZIP or TAR archive, the library fails to sanitize or validate the filenames of the archive members. This allow files to be written outside the intended destination directory, potentially leading to arbitrary file overwrite and Remote Code Execution (RCE). Version 5.2.2 contains a fix.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2026-40491 since 04/13/2026. The exploitation is known to be easy. The attack may be launched remotely. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. There are known technical details, but no exploit is available. The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1006.

Upgrading to version 5.2.2 eliminates this vulnerability. The upgrade is hosted for download at github.com. Applying the patch af569fc6ed300b7974dee66dc51e9f01b57b4dff is able to eliminate this problem. The bugfix is ready for download at github.com. The best possible mitigation is suggested to be upgrading to the latest version.

Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

Productinfo

Vendor

• wkentaro

Name

• gdown

Version

• 5.2.0
• 5.2.1

License

• open-source

Website

• Product: https://github.com/wkentaro/gdown/

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Once again VulDB remains the best source for vulnerability data.

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