CVE-2026-26064 CRITICAL

CVE-2026-26064: calibre: Path Traversal Vulnerability Enables Arbitrary File Write and Remote Code Execution

Vendor Kovidgoyal
Product calibre
Weakness CWE-22 · Path traversal
Published February 20, 2026
Last update February 20, 2026

CVSS base score

9.3/10
Attack vector Local
Attack complexity Low
Privileges required None
User interaction
Confidentiality
Integrity

CVSS vector

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H

What the vulnerability does

01Description

calibre is a cross-platform e-book manager for viewing, converting, editing, and cataloging e-books. Versions 9.2.1 and below contain a Path Traversal vulnerability that allows arbitrary file writes anywhere the user has write permissions. On Windows, this leads to Remote Code Execution by writing a payload to the Startup folder, which executes on next login. Function extract_pictures only checks startswith('Pictures'), and does not sanitize '..' sequences. calibre's own ZipFile.extractall() in utils/zipfile.py does sanitize '..' via _get_targetpath(), but extract_pictures() bypasses this by using manual zf.read() + open(). This issue has been fixed in version 9.3.0.

Key dates

02Disclosure timeline

February 20, 2026 CVE published
February 20, 2026 Record updated