Affected: ulab-uiuc tiny-scientist

Tiny-Scientist is a lightweight framework for automating the entire lifecycle of scientific research—from ideation to implementation, writing, and review. In versions 0.1.1 and below, a critical path traversal vulnerability has been identified in the review_paper function in backend/app.py. The vulnerability allows malicious users to access arbitrary PDF files on the server by providing crafted file paths that bypass the intended security restrictions. This vulnerability allows attackers to: read any PDF file accessible to the server process, potentially access sensitive documents outside the intended directory and perform reconnaissance on the server's file system structure. This issue does not currently have a fix.

Affected: PyPI: tiny-scientist

## Description A critical path traversal vulnerability (CWE-22) has been identified in the `review_paper` function in `backend/app.py`. The vulnerability allows malicious users to access arbitrary PDF files on the server by providing crafted file paths that bypass the intended security restrictions.

## Impact This vulnerability allows attackers to: - Read any PDF file accessible to the server process - Potentially access sensitive documents outside the intended directory - Perform reconnaissance on the server's file system structure

## Vulnerable Code The issue occurs in the `review_paper` function around line 744:

```python if pdf_path.startswith("/api/files/"): # Safe path handling for API routes relative_path = pdf_path[len("/api/files/"):] generated_base = os.path.join(project_root, "generated") absolute_pdf_path = os.path.join(generated_base, relative_path) else: absolute_pdf_path = pdf_path # VULNERABLE: Direct use of user input ```

## Proof of Concept ```bash curl -X POST http://localhost:5000/api/review \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"pdf_path": "/etc/passwd"}' ```

## Credit This vulnerability was discovered and reported by Ruizhe.