CVE-2026-40281

CRITICAL

Gotenberg vulnerable to argument injection via newlines in ExifTool metadata values

Title source: cna
STIX 2.1

Exploitation Summary

EIP tracks 1 public exploit for CVE-2026-40281. PoCs published by ByteWraith1.

AI-analyzed exploit summary The repository claims to exploit CVE-2026-40281 in Gotenberg PDF API via metadata injection but lacks actual exploit code, instead redirecting users to an external download link (tinyurl).

Description

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.

Exploits (1)

nomisec SUSPICIOUS
by ByteWraith1 · poc
https://github.com/ByteWraith1/CVE-2026-40281

The repository claims to exploit CVE-2026-40281 in Gotenberg PDF API via metadata injection but lacks actual exploit code, instead redirecting users to an external download link (tinyurl).

Classification
Suspicious 90%
Attack Type
Other
Complexity
Theoretical
Reliability
Theoretical
Target: Gotenberg PDF API (versions 8.30.1 and earlier)
No auth needed
Prerequisites: Python 3.8+ · requests library · argparse library
devstral-2 · analyzed May 07, 2026 Full analysis →

Scores

CVSS v3 10.0
EPSS 0.0003
EPSS Percentile 7.8%
Attack Vector NETWORK
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation poc
Automatable yes
Technical Impact partial

Details

CWE
CWE-88
Status published
Products (3)
gotenberg/gotenberg 0 - 8.31.0Go
gotenberg/gotenberg <= 8.30.1
thecodingmachine/gotenberg < 8.31.0
Published May 06, 2026
Tracked Since May 07, 2026