CVE-2026-49342 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) Path Traversal vulnerability in yard. A fix is available for yard — see the affected versions and patch details below.
YARD static cache reads raw traversal paths before router sanitization
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.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for CVE-2026-49342.
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-2026-49342 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 379,842 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
yardReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects RubyGems packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Summary
YARD's static cache lookup reads a request path before the router's path cleanup runs. When a server is configured with a document root, a traversal path such as /../yard-cache-secret.html is joined against that root and can return a readable sibling .html file outside the intended static tree.
The potential security risk seems low, as only html-ending files can be read, but still the risk of reading arbitrary html files is a confiendtiality issue in itself, which is why we decided to report. Please let us know if this is out of your project's scope.
Details
The --docroot CLI option stores the configured directory in server_options[:DocumentRoot] at lib/yard/cli/server.rb:198, and adapter initialization copies that value into adapter.document_root at lib/yard/server/adapter.rb:76. For Rack requests, RackAdapter#call builds a request object from the Rack environment at lib/yard/server/rack_adapter.rb:58 and passes it to router.call(request) at lib/yard/server/rack_adapter.rb:60. Router#call then stores the incoming request at lib/yard/server/router.rb:55 and invokes check_static_cache before normal routing at lib/yard/server/router.rb:56. Inside check_static_cache, the only initial guard is that adapter.document_root is present at lib/yard/server/static_caching.rb:35; the cache path is built from File.join(adapter.document_root, request.path.sub(/\.html$/, '') + '.html') at lib/yard/server/static_caching.rb:36, without cleaning .. components first. If that resolved path is a regular file, File.file? accepts it at lib/yard/server/static_caching.rb:38 and the file bytes are returned as a 200 HTML response at lib/yard/server/static_caching.rb:40. The later route sanitizer in final_options uses File.cleanpath(...).gsub(...) at lib/yard/server/router.rb:181 and lib/yard/server/router.rb:182, but a static-cache hit returns before that code is reached.
PoC
bash ./poc/run.sh
expected output:
run 1: exit=0 timed_out=False duration=0.08s matched=True phase=oracle fingerprint='YARD_STATIC_CACHE_PATH_TRAVERSAL'
run 2: exit=0 timed_out=False duration=0.08s matched=True phase=oracle fingerprint='YARD_STATIC_CACHE_PATH_TRAVERSAL'
run 3: exit=0 timed_out=False duration=0.08s matched=True phase=oracle fingerprint='YARD_STATIC_CACHE_PATH_TRAVERSAL'
The YARD_STATIC_CACHE_PATH_TRAVERSAL fingerprint is emitted only after the PoC observes a 200 static-cache response whose body contains the sibling file outside the configured document root. A setup failure, syntax failure, or cache miss would not print this oracle and would not demonstrate this traversal read.
Impact
A remote unauthenticated HTTP client who can reach a YARD documentation server with DocumentRoot/--docroot enabled can request .html paths containing parent-directory components and receive readable matching files outside the configured document root. The required guards are narrow: adapter.document_root must be set, the traversed target must exist as a regular readable file, and the target must be reachable through the implementation's forced .html suffix. Those requests bypass the later final_options path cleanup because the cache check runs first. The resulting severity class is information disclosure: response bodies can contain off-root .html file contents, but this path does not show write access, code execution, or arbitrary files without the .html constraint.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 💎RubyGems | yard | all versions | 0.9.44bundle update yard --conservative |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for yard, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update yard to 0.9.44 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2026-49342 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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like CVE-2026-49342 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to CVE-2026-49342. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
This Moderate impact path traversal vulnerability in YARD does not affect Red Hat products as the vulnerable code is not present.
Mitigation for this issue is either not available or the currently available options do not meet the Red Hat Product Security criteria comprising ease of use and deployment, applicability to widespread installation base, or stability.Source: Red Hat security advisory for CVE-2026-49342 (CC BY 4.0)
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2026-49342 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds CVE-2026-49342 across RubyGems dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.