# CVE-2019-17538: Jiangnan Online Judge - Directory Traversal

> Live exploitation tracking for CVE-2019-17538 by the CrowdSec Live Exploit Tracker, built from real-world attack data crowdsourced from CrowdSec's global network.

Page: https://tracker.crowdsec.net/cves/CVE-2019-17538

## Key facts

- **Exploitation phase:** Limited Exploitation. The vulnerability is known but shows very limited attacker interest or exploitation activity.
- **CVSS score:** 7.5
- **Public exploit available:** Yes
- **Affected products:** Jiangnan Online Judge
- **Weaknesses:** CWE-22 (Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal'))

## Description

Jiangnan Online Judge (aka jnoj) 0.8.0 has Directory Traversal for file reading via the web/polygon/problem/viewfile?id=1&name=../ substring.

## CrowdSec analysis

[CVE-2019-17538](https://euvd.enisa.europa.eu/vulnerability/CVE-2019-17538) is a directory traversal vulnerability in Jiangnan Online Judge that allows attackers to read arbitrary files on the server by abusing path traversal in file view requests.

CrowdSec has been tracking this vulnerability and its exploits since 16th of May 2024.

Insights from the CrowdSec network reveal that the attackers trying to exploit CVE-2019-17538 are composed of a fairly even mix of opportunistic and targeted actors. Some attackers employ preliminary reconnaissance, while others use indiscriminate scanning.
Data from the CrowdSec community also indicates a gradual decrease in attacks targeting CVE-2019-17538. While still present in the wild, exploitation levels have dropped noticeably week-over-week. This may signal that the vulnerability is becoming less relevant or that defenses are improving fast enough for attackers to lose interest.

Observed attack attempts target URLs containing `/jnoj/web/polygon/problem/viewfile` and leverage traversal patterns to gain unauthorized file access.

## Timeline

- 2019-10-13: CVE Published. CVE-2019-17538 is published to NVD.
- 2024-05-16: Rule Released. CrowdSec releases a rule to detect CVE-2019-17538 exploitation attempts against the CrowdSec Network.
- 2024-11-23: CrowdSec First Seen. CrowdSec observes in-the-wild exploitation of CVE-2019-17538 for the first time.

## References

- https://github.com/shi-yang/jnoj/issues/53
- https://github.com/projectdiscovery/nuclei-templates/blob/main/http/cves/2019/CVE-2019-17538.yaml

## Live exploitation data

The [Live Exploit Tracker page](https://tracker.crowdsec.net/cves/CVE-2019-17538) follows observed exploitation activity for CVE-2019-17538. [Request an API key](https://tracker.crowdsec.net/request-api-key) for full access to its exploitation timeline, attacking IP addresses and blocklists.