Fix CWE-22 path traversal (Tar Slip) in dataset archive extraction#709
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bharathjanumpally wants to merge 2 commits into
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Fix CWE-22 path traversal (Tar Slip) in dataset archive extraction#709bharathjanumpally wants to merge 2 commits into
bharathjanumpally wants to merge 2 commits into
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Replace insecure HTTP URLs with HTTPS to prevent man-in-the-middle interception of requests on these four lines. CVE-2026-43635 Co-authored-by: Bharath Kumar Reddy Janumpally <bharathreddy.janumpally@gmail.com>
Co-authored-by: rahulreddykarne <krc7169@gmail.com>
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Summary
Fixes a path traversal ("Tar Slip") vulnerability in dataset archive extraction.
• CVE: CVE-2026-43637
• CWE: CWE-22 - Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory
Description
_extract_archive() in cornac/utils/download.py called archive.extractall()
on TAR archives without validating member paths. A TAR archive containing
members with ../ sequences (or symlink/hardlink entries) could write files
outside the intended cache directory, allowing arbitrary file write on the
filesystem accessible to the running process.
This is reachable through the built-in dataset loaders, which download and
extract archives automatically when a loader function is called.
Fix
Replaced the unchecked extractall() with a hardened, per-member extraction
( _safe_extract ) that:
• resolves each member's destination and rejects any path that escapes the
extraction directory (blocks ../ , absolute, and prefix-collision paths);
• allows only regular files and directories - blocks symlinks, hardlinks,
FIFOs, and device files;
• extracts one member at a time so each write is validated against the live
filesystem (closing the check/extract race);
• cleans up only the files written during a failed/blocked extraction, without
touching the rest of the cache;
• applies the data extraction filter on Python 3.12+ as defense-in-depth.
Public API ( cache , get_cache_path ) is unchanged, so this is a drop-in fix.
Additional hardening
Switched the MovieLens dataset URLs in cornac/datasets/movielens.py from
http:// to https:// to prevent a man-in-the-middle from substituting a
malicious archive over cleartext (CWE-319).
Files changed
• cornac/utils/download.py - path-traversal fix
• cornac/datasets/movielens.py - HTTP to HTTPS for dataset downloads
Related Issues
Checklist:
README.md(if you are adding a new model).examples/README.md(if you are adding a new example).datasets/README.md(if you are adding a new dataset).