CVE-2026-88046: rclone Path Traversal

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-88046 is a medium (CVSS 5.3) Path Traversal vulnerability in rclone. EPSS estimates a 0.29% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 20.6% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 10-09-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 15-09-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

rclone is a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers. Prior to 1.75.1, rclone core does not reject parent-directory segments in source Object.Remote() values before fs/list, fs/walk, fs/sync, and fs/operations pass those values to destination backends. A flat-keyspace source object store populated with native non-rclone tooling can contain a raw .. key segment, and affected b2, swift, qingstor, oracleobjectstorage, internetarchive, smb, storj, sftp, webdav, ftp, filelu, shade, and sia destinations use path.Join(root, remote) before EncodeDot can neutralize the segment. A copy or upload can therefore escape the configured root into another bucket, share, or path reachable by the victim credential, with sftp and smb potentially reaching other filesystem or share locations under the same login authority. This issue is fixed in version 1.75.1.

• CWE-22Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal')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.