Opening workflows from untrusted resources may override arbitrary file system contents

A directory traversal vulnerability in the ZIP archive extraction routines of KNIME Analytics Platform 3.2.0 and above can result in arbitrary files being overwritten on the user's system. This vulnerability is also known as 'Zip-Slip'.

An attacker can create a KNIME workflow that, when being opened by a user, can overwrite arbitrary files that the user has write access to. It's not necessary to execute the workflow, opening the workflow is sufficient. The user will notice that something is wrong because an error is being reported but only after the files have already been written.

This can impact data integrity (file contents are changed) or cause errors in other software (vital files being corrupted). It can even lead to remote code execution if executable files are being replaced and subsequently executed by the user. In all cases the attacker has to know the location of files on the user's system, though.