VulnerabilityPublished 1 Oct 2025

CVE-2025-11233: Rust Project std · Path Traversal

Affects Rust Project stdSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.3 Medium · fixed in 1.89.0 : update Rust Project std when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 14:05 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score

6.3Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.5% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 43% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 1.89.0

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:L/SC:L/SI:L/SA:L/AU:Y/RE:L/U:Green

Base metrics

Attack Vector: Network
Attack Complexity: Low
Attack Requirements: Present
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Vulnerable system confidentiality: Low
Vulnerable system integrity: Low
Vulnerable system availability: Low
Subsequent system confidentiality: Low
Subsequent system integrity: Low
Subsequent system availability: Low

Supplemental metrics

Automatable: Yes
Vulnerability Response Effort: Low
Provider Urgency: Green

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Network: The vulnerable system is bound to the network stack and the set of possible attackers extends beyond the other options listed below, up to and including the entire Internet. Such a vulnerability is often termed “remotely exploitable” and can be thought of as an attack being exploitable at the protocol level one or more network hops away (e.g., across one or more routers).
Attack Complexity: Low: The attacker must take no measurable action to exploit the vulnerability. The attack requires no target-specific circumvention to exploit the vulnerability. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable system.
Attack Requirements: Present: The successful attack depends on the presence of specific deployment and execution conditions of the vulnerable system that enable the attack. These include: a race condition must be won to successfully exploit the vulnerability (the successfulness of the attack is conditioned on execution conditions that are not under full control of the attacker, or the attack may need to be launched multiple times against a single target before being successful); the attacker must inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim (e.g. vulnerabilities requiring an on-path attacker).
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files of the vulnerable system to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: None: The vulnerable system can be exploited without interaction from any human user, other than the attacker.
Vulnerable system confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact to the Vulnerable System.
Vulnerable system availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the Vulnerable System are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the Vulnerable System.
Subsequent system confidentiality: Low: There is some loss of confidentiality. Access to some restricted information is obtained, but the attacker does not have control over what information is obtained, or the amount or kind of loss is limited. The information disclosure does not cause a direct, serious loss to the Subsequent System.
Subsequent system integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact to the Subsequent System.
Subsequent system availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the Subsequent System are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the Subsequent System.
Automatable: Yes: Attackers can reliably automate all 4 steps of the kill chain. These steps are reconnaissance, weaponization, delivery, and exploitation (e.g., the vulnerability is “wormable”).
Vulnerability Response Effort: Low: The effort required to respond to a vulnerability is low/trivial. Examples include: communication on better documentation, configuration workarounds, or guidance from the vendor that does not require an immediate update, upgrade, or replacement by the consuming entity, such as firewall filter configuration.
Provider Urgency: Green: Provider has assessed the impact of this vulnerability as having a reduced urgency.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v4.0 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 1 Oct 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 26 Oct 2026.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC or the CVSS exploit maturity reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
Rust Project std	Affected =1.87.0	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate the risk posed by CVE-2025-11233, European organizations should take the following specific actions: 1) Audit Rust projects and build pipelines to identify any use of the `x86_64-pc-cygwin` target. 2) If the Cygwin target is used, upgrade Rust to version 1.89.0 or later, where the vulnerability is fixed. 3) For projects requiring path validation, implement additional manual checks to sanitize and normalize paths, ensuring that backslash separators are properly handled and path traversal attempts are detected. 4) Avoid using the tier 3 Cygwin target unless absolutely necessary; prefer the tier 1 MinGW target which is not affected. 5) Review and restrict filesystem permissions for applications compiled with the vulnerable target to minimize potential damage from exploitation. 6) Monitor development environments and build systems for unusual file access patterns that could indicate exploitation attempts. 7) Educate developers about secure path handling practices, especially when working with cross-platform path separators. These measures go beyond generic advice by focusing on build environment auditing, targeted upgrades, and enhanced path validation tailored to the specific vulnerability context.

Description

Starting from Rust 1.87.0 and before Rust 1.89.0, the tier 3 Cygwin target (`x86_64-pc-cygwin`) didn't correctly handle path separators, causing the standard library's Path API to ignore path components separated by backslashes. Due to this, programs compiled for Cygwin that validate paths could misbehave, potentially allowing path traversal attacks or malicious filesystem operations. Rust 1.89.0 fixes the issue by handling both Win32 and Unix style paths in the standard library for the Cygwin target. While we assess the severity of this vulnerability as "medium", please note that the tier 3 Cygwin compilation target is only available when building it from source: no pre-built binaries are distributed by the Rust project, and it cannot be installed through Rustup. Unless you manually compiled the `x86_64-pc-cygwin` target you are not affected by this vulnerability. Users of the tier 1 MinGW target (`x86_64-pc-windows-gnu`) are also explicitly not affected.

Impact

For European organizations, the impact of CVE-2025-11233 is limited but non-negligible. Since the vulnerability affects only Rust programs compiled for the niche Cygwin target, the exposure is primarily among development teams or specialized software that use this target for compatibility with Unix-like environments on Windows. If exploited, attackers could perform path traversal attacks leading to unauthorized access or modification of sensitive files, potentially compromising application integrity and confidentiality. This could affect internal tools, build systems, or custom applications developed in Rust for Cygwin. However, the limited distribution of the vulnerable target reduces the likelihood of widespread impact. Organizations relying on Rust for Windows development but using the more common MinGW target are not affected. European entities with critical infrastructure or software development operations that utilize Cygwin environments should be particularly cautious, as exploitation could disrupt operations or lead to data breaches. The medium severity rating reflects the moderate risk, given the difficulty of exploitation and limited affected scope. Overall, the threat is more relevant to niche development environments rather than broad enterprise deployments in Europe.

CWE-22Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') (opens in a new tab)
Base weaknessLikelihood of exploit: HighCWE Top 25 (2025): #6OWASP Top 10 A01:2025: Broken Access Control (opens in a new tab)
The product uses external input to construct a pathname that is intended to identify a file or directory that is located underneath a restricted parent directory, but the product does not properly neutralize special elements within the pathname that can cause the pathname to resolve to a location that is outside of the restricted directory.
Implementation · Input Validation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
Architecture and Design
For any security checks that are performed on the client side, ensure that these checks are duplicated on the server side, in order to avoid CWE-602. Attackers can bypass the client-side checks by modifying values after the checks have been performed, or by changing the client to remove the client-side checks…
Implementation · Input Validation
Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174).
OWASP Cheat Sheets
Authorization (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
Path Traversal (opens in a new tab)
Using Slashes and URL Encoding Combined to Bypass Validation Logic (opens in a new tab)
Manipulating Web Input to File System Calls (opens in a new tab)
Using Escaped Slashes in Alternate Encoding (opens in a new tab)
Using Slashes in Alternate Encoding (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 1 Oct 2025, 16:57 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-22

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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