GHSA-89p7-7cq3-hhr2
rm: 'rm -rf ./' (and ./// variants) silently deletes current directory contents, bypassing dot protection
Packages
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
`rm -rf .` is correctly refused, but `clean_trailing_slashes` normalizes `.///` to `./` while `path_is_current_or_parent_directory` only matches `.`/`..` (and `/.`/`/..`), not `./` or `../`. So `rm -rf ./` recursively deletes the directory's contents and then prints a misleading `cannot remove './': Invalid input`.
**Impact:** all files/subdirectories in the current directory are silently deleted; the misleading error makes users miss the recovery window. Recommendation: handle trailing-slash variants in `path_is_current_or_parent_directory`.
**Remediation:** Acknowledged by Canonical; fixed in commit d0e5af23.
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_Reported by Zellic in the *uutils coreutils Program Security Assessment* (prepared for Canonical, Jan 20 2026), audited commit `3a07ffc5a9bd4c283e75afa548ba1f1957bad242`. Finding 3.60. Credit: Zellic._
_Upstream tracking issue: https://github.com/uutils/coreutils/issues/9749 · CVE-2026-35363_
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.