CVE-2026-46491 is a high-severity (CVSS 8.6) Path Traversal vulnerability in simplesamlphp/simplesamlphp-module-casserver. O3 Security confirms whether CVE-2026-46491 is actually reachable in your code before you act, and blocks exploitation at runtime until you patch.
SimpleSAMLphp casserver FileSystemTicketStore path traversal allows out-of-ticket-directory read/unserialize and conditional deletion
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA assesses this as automatable — exploitation doesn’t require manual, per-target effort, which raises the odds of mass scanning and opportunistic attacks.
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-46491.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2026-46491 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 358,265 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
simplesamlphp/simplesamlphp-module-casserverReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
SimpleSAMLphp-casserver is a CAS 1.0 and 2.0 compliant CAS server in the form of a SimpleSAMLphp module. Prior to version 7.0.3, simplesamlphp-module-casserver builds file paths for the file-based CAS ticket store by directly concatenating the configured ticket directory with an attacker-controlled ticket identifier. Public CAS validation/proxy endpoints pass attacker-controlled ticket / pgt query parameters into this store. In deployments using FileSystemTicketStore, a remote attacker can use path traversal sequences such as ../target.serialized to make the CAS server read and unserialize files outside the ticket directory. In the CAS 1.0 validation flow, the same attacker-selected path is also passed to deleteTicket() immediately after getTicket() returns, which can delete the target file when it is readable by the PHP process, deletable under the PHP process filesystem permissions, and unserializes to a value compatible with the ?array return type. This issue has been patched in version 7.0.3.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | simplesamlphp/simplesamlphp-module-casserver | all versions | 7.0.3 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for simplesamlphp/simplesamlphp-module-casserver. O3's reachability analysis confirms whether the vulnerable code path is actually invoked in your application, so you act on real exposure instead of every transitive match.
Fix
Update simplesamlphp/simplesamlphp-module-casserver to 7.0.3 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-46491 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
How O3 protects you
O3 pinpoints whether CVE-2026-46491 is reachable in your code and exactly where to fix it, then blocks exploitation in production at runtime until the patched version is deployed.
Tailored to CVE-2026-46491. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-46491 in your dependencies?
O3 detects CVE-2026-46491 across Packagist dependencies and uses function-level reachability to confirm whether the vulnerable code path is actually reachable — not just present. No false positives.