CVE-2024-38819: a live path-traversal PoC in Spring Framework
Walking through a real functional-web-framework path traversal — from the theory to /etc/passwd on a running Spring Boot app.
This video is a hands-on demonstration of CVE-2024-38819, a path-traversal vulnerability in Spring Framework's functional web routing. Rather than just reading the advisory, I build a vulnerable Spring Boot application and exploit it end to end.
What the video covers
- Why static-resource routing in the functional (
RouterFunction) style can be tricked into serving files outside the intended directory. - How symbolic links and percent-encoding combine to escape the web root and reach sensitive files like
/etc/passwd. - Building the vulnerable app, then the exact request sequence that turns the flaw into arbitrary file read.
- Why the "obvious"
../filter isn't enough, and what the real fix looks like.
Why I made it
Advisories tell you that a bug exists. They rarely show you how it feels to exploit one. I wanted a video where you can follow along, reproduce the PoC yourself, and walk away actually understanding the primitive — not just its CVE number.
The video is in Persian; the code, requests and payloads on screen are language-neutral and easy to follow.