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🛡️ Sentinel: [HIGH] Fix Path Traversal Vulnerability #73

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🛡️ Sentinel: [HIGH] Fix Path Traversal Vulnerability #73

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4 changes: 4 additions & 0 deletions .jules/sentinel.md
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
## 2026-04-02 - Prevent Path Traversal in File I/O
**Vulnerability:** The `StatusSocket` daemon accepted user-provided file paths for configuration validation (`handleValidateConfig`) without checking if the resolved path escaped the intended directory scope. This allowed local file inclusion and path traversal attacks (e.g., `../../../../../etc/passwd`) because `expandingTildeInPath` does not resolve parent directory (`..`) components.
**Learning:** In Swift, relying solely on `expandingTildeInPath` or `lstat` to validate user-supplied file paths is insufficient. Parent directory references must be resolved to their canonical absolute paths before any security boundaries can be enforced.
**Prevention:** Always use `(path as NSString).standardizingPath` to resolve `..` components and follow up with a prefix check (`hasPrefix(allowedDirectoryPath)`) to ensure the normalized path strictly resides within the expected security boundary.
19 changes: 15 additions & 4 deletions Sources/Cacheout/Headless/StatusSocket.swift
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Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -474,14 +474,25 @@ public final class StatusSocket: @unchecked Sendable {
}

let expandedPath = (path as NSString).expandingTildeInPath
let standardizedPath = (expandedPath as NSString).standardizingPath
let cacheoutDirPath = (FileManager.default.homeDirectoryForCurrentUser.appendingPathComponent(".cacheout").path as NSString).standardizingPath

// Ensure path traversal is not attempting to escape ~/.cacheout/
guard standardizedPath.hasPrefix(cacheoutDirPath + "/") else {
sendSuccessResponse(fd: fd, data: [
"valid": false,
"errors": ["Configuration file must be located within ~/.cacheout/"],
] as [String: Any])
return
}

// lstat to reject symlinks to special files, FIFOs, devices, etc.
var sb = Darwin.stat()
let statResult: Int32 = lstat(expandedPath, &sb)
let statResult: Int32 = lstat(standardizedPath, &sb)
guard statResult == 0 else {
sendSuccessResponse(fd: fd, data: [
"valid": false,
"errors": ["File not found: \(expandedPath)"],
"errors": ["File not found: \(standardizedPath)"],
] as [String: Any])
return
}
Expand All @@ -490,7 +501,7 @@ public final class StatusSocket: @unchecked Sendable {
guard (sb.st_mode & S_IFMT) == S_IFREG else {
sendSuccessResponse(fd: fd, data: [
"valid": false,
"errors": ["Not a regular file: \(expandedPath)"],
"errors": ["Not a regular file: \(standardizedPath)"],
] as [String: Any])
return
}
Expand All @@ -505,7 +516,7 @@ public final class StatusSocket: @unchecked Sendable {
}

do {
let fileData = try Data(contentsOf: URL(fileURLWithPath: expandedPath))
let fileData = try Data(contentsOf: URL(fileURLWithPath: standardizedPath))
let errors = AutopilotConfigValidator.validate(data: fileData)
sendSuccessResponse(fd: fd, data: [
"valid": errors.isEmpty,
Expand Down