CVE-2002-0435: GNU Fileutils

Low severity, CVSS 1.2. EPSS: 0.3% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

Race condition in the recursive (1) directory deletion and (2) directory move in GNU File Utilities (fileutils) 4.1 and earlier allows local users to delete directories as the user running fileutils by moving a low-level directory to a higher level as it is being deleted, which causes fileutils to chdir to a ".." directory that is higher than expected, possibly up to the root file system.

Affected products

• GNU Fileutils: version 4.0 only; version 4.1 only; version 4.1.6 only

Published 2002-07-26. Last modified 2026-06-16.