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doc: clarify path.isAbsolute is not enough for mitigating path traversals #57073

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Merged
aduh95 merged 4 commits into from
Mar 2, 2025
Merged

doc: clarify path.isAbsolute is not enough for mitigating path traversals #57073

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6399f9e
doc: clarify path.isAbsolute doesn’t resolve paths
ericfortis Feb 15, 2025
7cbdcbb
doc: clarify path.isAbsolute doesn’t resolve paths
ericfortis Feb 16, 2025
f79fbba
doc: clarify path.isAbsolute doesn’t resolve paths
ericfortis Mar 2, 2025
b68f49b
doc: clarify path.isAbsolute doesn’t resolve paths
ericfortis Mar 2, 2025
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doc: clarify path.isAbsolute doesn’t resolve paths
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@ericfortis
ericfortis committed Mar 2, 2025
commit b68f49b105f8385faf70b145e64343434087af6e
14 changes: 2 additions & 12 deletions doc/api/path.md
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Expand Up @@ -318,21 +318,11 @@ added: v0.11.2
* Returns: {boolean}

The `path.isAbsolute()` method determines if the literal `path` is absolute.
Therefore, it’s not safe for mitigating path traversals without normalizing it.

```js
// Normalizing the subpath mitigates traversing above the mount directory
const subpath = '/foo/../..'
if (!path.isAbsolute(path.normalize(subpath))) {
throw 'FORBIDDEN'
}
const myPath = path.join(MOUNT_DIR, subpath)
```

Therefore, it’s not safe for mitigating path traversals.

If the given `path` is a zero-length string, `false` will be returned.

On POSIX:
For example, on POSIX:

```js
path.isAbsolute('/foo/bar'); // true
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