CVE-2022-24840 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.1) Path Traversal vulnerability in django-s3file. 1 public exploit or proof-of-concept reference is indexed, so weaponization risk is real. A fix is available for django-s3file — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') in django-s3file
Exploitation Status
Proof-of-concept exploit code exists
- CISA’s SSVC triage found public proof-of-concept exploit code for this CVE, though no confirmed active exploitation.
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- A successful exploit gives an attacker total control of the affected component, not partial access.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2022-24840.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
Where this sits among everything scored
Real-World Exposure
django-s3fileReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
It was possible to traverse the entire AWS S3 bucket and in most cases to access or delete files. The issue was discovered by the maintainer. There were no reports of the vulnerability being known to or exploited by a third party, before the release of the patch.
If the AWS_LOCATION setting was set, traversal was limited to that location only.
If all your files handling views (like form views) require authentication or special permission, the thread is limited to privileged users.
Patches
The vulnerability has been fixed in version 5.5.1 and above.
Workarounds
There is no feasible workaround. We must urge all users to immediately updated to a patched version.
Detailed attack vector description
An attacker may use a request with malicious form data to traverse the entire AWS S3 bucket and perform destructive operations.
An attack could look as follows:
curl -X POST -F "s3file=file" -F "file=/priviliged/location/secrets.txt" https://www.example.com/any/path/will/work/
This will result in a request with files set and opened:
>>> request.FILES.getlist("file")
[File("/priviliged/location/secrets.txt")]
Since this behavior is injected via a middleware, any view can be called this way and will carry any files defined by the attacker.
Via the s3file form field, any input name can be specified, including multiple inputs. For each input, multiple files can be freely
picked of the S3 bucket.
Scenarios and their practicality
There are four scenarios that would be considered practical in most setups:
- Illegal file injection,
- file deletion,
- file retrieval & tree traversal.
- code injection & remote code execution.
File deletion
An attacker knows the location of a privileged file, like a static asset. Next, the file is injected into a form view. The upload to function will move the file to a new location. This is effectively deleting the file, since the previous references to it are invalid, and will cause S3 to return a 404. Furthermore, the new location is unknown to the site operator.
File retrieval & tree traversal
An attacker knows the URL of a secret file and injects it into a form view. The view will move the file to a public location, making it accessible to the attacker. Since most form views will not be rate limited, this could also be used to guess files and traverse the file tree.
Illegal file injection
An attacker uses any form to upload a file to the temporary upload location. Next, the attacker injects that file into a request, does not validate the contents or is not equipped to handle the mime type. The latter could be used as a potential DOS vector.
In practice, this is not a practical risk in most hardened setup. Files should always be sanitized before processing, since files can be included in a request even without this security issues.
For more information
If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:
- Open an issue on GitHub
- Email us at [email protected]
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐍PyPI | django-s3file | all versions | 5.5.1pip install --upgrade 'django-s3file==5.5.1' |
Affected Products
django-s3filedjango-s3file_projectResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for django-s3file, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update django-s3file to 5.5.1 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2022-24840 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2022-24840 in your dependencies?
Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.