CRITICAL: CVE-2026-40281 (CVSS 10) — multiple products

CVE: CVE-2026-40281

CVSS: 10 (3.1) — CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:H

Severity: CRITICAL

Status: Critical advisory

Affected

_See vendor advisory_

Summary

Gotenberg is a Docker-powered stateless API for PDF files. In versions 8.30.1 and earlier, the metadata write endpoint validates metadata keys for control characters but leaves metadata values unsanitized. A newline character in a metadata value splits the ExifTool stdin line into two separate arguments, allowing injection of arbitrary ExifTool pseudo-tags such as -FileName, -Directory, -SymLink, and -HardLink. This is a bypass of the incomplete key-sanitization fix introduced in v8.30.1. An unauthenticated attacker can rename or move any PDF being processed to an arbitrary path in the container filesystem, overwrite arbitrary files, or create symlinks and hard links at arbitrary paths.

Verified Sources

• NVD entry
• GitHub Advisory
• MITRE

References

• https://github.com/gotenberg/gotenberg/commit/405f1069c026bb08f319fb5a44e5c67c33208318
• https://github.com/gotenberg/gotenberg/security/advisories/GHSA-q7r4-hc83-hf2q

_Validated by the Lyrie Threat Intelligence Pipeline — 3 independent sources confirmed before publication. No speculation._