CVE-2024-4701 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.9) Path Traversal vulnerability in com.netflix.genie:genie-web. EPSS puts its 30-day exploitation probability at 24.6% (98th percentile). A fix is available for com.netflix.genie:genie-web — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Path Traversal vulnerability via File Uploads in Genie
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-2024-4701.
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
com.netflix.genie:genie-webReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Maven packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Overview
Path Traversal Vulnerability via File Uploads in Genie
Impact
Any Genie OSS users running their own instance and relying on the filesystem to store file attachments submitted to the Genie application may be impacted. Using this technique, it is possible to write a file with any user-specified filename and file contents to any location on the file system that the Java process has write access - potentially leading to remote code execution (RCE).
Genie users who do not store these attachments locally on the underlying file system are not vulnerable to this issue.
Description
Genie's API accepts a multipart/form-data file upload which can be saved to a location on disk. However, it takes a user-supplied filename as part of the request and uses this as the filename when writing the file to disk. Since this filename is user-controlled, it is possible for a malicious actor to manipulate the filename in order to break out of the default attachment storage path and perform path traversal.
Using this technique it is possible to write a file with any user specified name and file contents to any location on the file system that the Java process has write access to.
Patches
This path traversal issue is fixed in Genie OSS v4.3.18. This issue was fixed in https://github.com/Netflix/genie/pull/1216 and https://github.com/Netflix/genie/pull/1217 and a new release with the fix was created. Please, upgrade your Genie OSS instances to the new version.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| ☕Maven | com.netflix.genie:genie-web | all versions | 4.3.18com.netflix.genie:genie-web:4.3.18 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for com.netflix.genie:genie-web, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update com.netflix.genie:genie-web to 4.3.18 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2024-4701 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
Resolve every user-supplied path to its canonical form and reject anything that escapes the intended directory, and run the component under an account that has no read or write access outside the directory it legitimately serves.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2024-4701 in your dependencies?
Find it across Maven, including transitive dependencies.