CVE-2026-78254
UnknownSummary
The ftp and scp tasks of Apache Ant can download files from a remote server. A malicious server can provide relative paths that allow it to write outside of the dedicated target directory for the download, making it possible to overwrite files of the attacker's choice using the permissions of the user running Ant in versions prior to Ant 1.10.18.
Risk Assessment
The organization may be at risk of file overwriting by an attacker if Ant is used to download files from untrusted servers, potentially leading to system integrity compromise or malicious code injection.
Recommendation
It is recommended to upgrade Apache Ant to version 1.10.18 or later, which by default prevents writing outside the destination directory. Users of scp and ftp (when using ftps) should not bypass server identity checks.
Other vulnerabilities in Apache Ant
See all- CVE-2021-36374Medium
When reading a specially crafted ZIP archive or derived formats, an Apache Ant build can be made to allocate large amounts of memory, leading to an out-of-memory error even for small inputs. This can disrupt builds using Apache Ant. Versions prior to 1.9.16 and 1.10.11 are affected.
- CVE-2021-36373Medium
When reading a specially crafted TAR archive, an Apache Ant build can be made to allocate large amounts of memory, leading to an out-of-memory error even for small inputs. This can disrupt builds using Apache Ant. Versions prior to 1.9.16 and 1.10.11 are affected.
Original NVD description (English source)
The ftp and scp tasks of Apache Ant can download files from a remote server. A malicious server can provide relative paths that allow it to write outside of the dedicated target directory for the download, making it possible to overwrite files of the attacker's choice using the permissions of the user running Ant in versions prior to Ant 1.10.18. In order to exploit this vulnerability, the server would either have to be malicious or be subject to a machine-in-the-middle attack. Additionally in the case of scp or the ftp task using ftps the server must pass the server identity checks performed by the tasks. For ftp tasks not using ftps a malicious server could act as a machine-in-the-middle to provide malicious files. Starting with Ant 1.10.18 both tasks will prevent writing outside of the destination directory by default. An option is available to disable this behavior in the unlikely case that the old behavior is required by existing build files. Mitigations: Users of scp and ftp (when using ftps) in any version of Ant should not bypass server identity checks. Users of ftp not using ftps should switch to ftps where possible. All users are recommended to upgrade to Apache Ant 1.10.18, which fixes this issue.