Path traversal in Open WebUI - CVE-2026-54017

Detailed vulnerability description

The vulnerability allows a remote user to access unintended endpoints and files on the terminal-server host and reach internal services via server-side request forgery.

The vulnerability exists due to path traversal in the terminal-server reverse proxy in backend/open_webui/routers/terminals.py when forwarding a user-controlled path segment to an admin-configured terminal server. A remote user can send a specially crafted request containing encoded traversal sequences to access unintended endpoints and files on the terminal-server host and reach internal services via server-side request forgery.

Exploitation requires that the user has been granted access to a terminal server, and the policy_id form can allow traversal outside the intended policy namespace.

How to mitigate CVE-2026-54017

Sources

• https://github.com/open-webui/open-webui/security/advisories/GHSA-r2wg-2mcr-66rv