Insecure parsing of Windows paths with a \??\ prefix in path/filepath

Summary

The filepath package does not recognize paths with a \??\ prefix as special. On Windows, a path beginning with \??\ is a Root Local Device path equivalent to a path beginning with \\?\. Paths with a \??\ prefix may be used to access arbitrary locations on the system. For example, the path \??\c:\x is equivalent to the more common path c:\x. Before fix, Clean could convert a rooted path such as \a\..\??\b into the root local device path \??\b. Clean will now convert this to .\??\b. Similarly, Join(\, ??, b) could convert a seemingly innocent sequence of path elements into the root local device path \??\b. Join will now convert this to \.\??\b. In addition, with fix, IsAbs now correctly reports paths beginning with \??\ as absolute, and VolumeName correctly reports the \??\ prefix as a volume name. UPDATE: Go 1.20.11 and Go 1.21.4 inadvertently changed the definition of the volume name in Windows paths starting with \?, resulting in filepath.Clean(\?\c:) returning \?\c: rather than \?\c:\ (among other effects). The previous behavior has been restored.

Timeline

1. Nov 9, 2023, 4:30 PM UTCCVE published
2. Feb 13, 2025, 5:13 PM UTCRecord last updated

Affected versions

• path/filepath

  fixed in 1.20.11; From 1.21.0-0 · fixed in 1.21.4

• internal/safefilepath

  fixed in 1.20.11; From 1.21.0-0 · fixed in 1.21.4

• path/filepath

  From 1.20.11 · fixed in 1.20.12; From 1.21.4 · fixed in 1.21.5

• stdlibGo

  fixed in 1.20.11; From 1.21.0-0 · fixed in 1.21.4

• stdlibGo

  From 1.20.11 · fixed in 1.20.12; From 1.21.4 · fixed in 1.21.5

References 9