Summary
CVE-2026-12609 is an unauthenticated path traversal vulnerability in Eclipse Theia’s @theia/plugin-ext backend. A remote attacker can read arbitrary files accessible to the Theia backend process, resulting in a loss of confidentiality. It affects Eclipse Theia versions 1.66.0 through 1.73.1 and is rated HIGH (CVSS 7.5).
Technical details
- Root cause: The
/hostedPlugin/:pluginId/:path(*)endpoint resolves the requested file path without validating that it remains within the plugin directory (CWE-22, Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory). - Trigger conditions: An attacker sends percent-encoded traversal sequences (
%2e%2e%2f, decoding to../) in the path to escape the plugin directory. - Attack vector: Network-based and unauthenticated — no privileges and no user interaction are required.
- Impact: Retrieval of arbitrary files readable by the Theia backend process (high confidentiality impact; no integrity or availability impact).
Affected software
- Eclipse Theia versions 1.66.0 through 1.73.1 (inclusive).
Severity
- CVSS v3.1 base score: 7.5 (HIGH)
- Vector string:
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
Mitigation and recommended actions
- Immediate: Upgrade to Eclipse Theia 1.74.0 or later, which contains the fix.
- If no patch can be applied: Restrict network access to the Theia backend so the affected endpoint is not reachable by untrusted clients until the upgrade can be performed.
How IONIX identifies potentially affected assets
IONIX matches the following signals against data already collected when it crawled the asset; identifying the technology sends no request beyond that crawl.
- Raw response body:
id="theia-app",window.theia - URL of a loaded script:
theia-<hex>.js

