CVE-2025-27519: Critical Path Traversal Vulnerability in Cognita RAG Framework

Overview

On March 7, 2025, a critical vulnerability identified as CVE-2025-27519 was disclosed, affecting the Cognita RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) framework developed by TrueFoundry. This vulnerability, categorized under CWE-22: Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory (‘Path Traversal’), allows attackers to write arbitrary files within the container environment, leading to remote code execution.

Vulnerability Details

The vulnerability resides in the /v1/internal/upload-to-local-directory endpoint, which becomes active when the Local environment variable is set to true. This setup is commonly found when Cognita is deployed using Docker. Due to Docker’s default use of uvicorn with auto-reload enabled, overwriting Python source files results in immediate execution of the new code.

An attacker can exploit this by overwriting critical files such as /app/backend/__init__.py, triggering arbitrary code execution inside the Docker container without any required user interaction or privileges.

Technical Breakdown

This vulnerability has been rated Critical with a CVSS v4.0 base score of 9.3. The CVSS vector string is:

CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Key characteristics include:

• Attack Vector: Network
• Attack Complexity: Low
• Privileges Required: None
• User Interaction: None
• Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability Impact: High

Due to the nature of the exploit, this issue is particularly dangerous in containerized environments where insecure configurations might go unnoticed.

Understanding CWE-22

CWE-22 refers to failures in restricting file paths, enabling attackers to access or modify files outside the intended directory scope. In this case, the lack of path validation allows overwriting key application files, which are then executed by the backend server due to auto-reload features.

Affected Versions and Fix

This vulnerability affects all versions of Cognita before commit a78bd065e05a1b30a53a3386cc02e08c317d2243. The issue has been addressed in this commit, which introduces proper path validation and mitigates the risk of arbitrary file write and execution.

Recommendations

• Update to the patched version containing commit a78bd065e05a1b30a53a3386cc02e08c317d2243.
• Disable the Local environment variable in production environments.
• Avoid enabling auto-reload in production deployments.
• Implement strict path validation in file upload handlers.

Conclusion

CVE-2025-27519 highlights the critical risks introduced by insecure file handling in containerized applications. Developers and DevOps teams should review their configurations and apply patches immediately to prevent potential exploitation. For further details, refer to the official GitHub advisory.