Critical severity · published Apr 21, 2026
CVE-2026-40576
Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory ('Path Traversal') in excel-mcp-server
9.4
CVSS
0.5%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
excel-mcp-server is a Model Context Protocol server for Excel file manipulation. A path traversal vulnerability exists in excel-mcp-server versions up to and including 0.1.7. When running in SSE or Streamable-HTTP transport mode (the documented way to use this server remotely), an unauthenticated attacker on the network can read, write, and overwrite arbitrary files on the host filesystem by supplying crafted filepath arguments to any of the 25 exposed MCP tool handlers. The server is intended to confine file operations to a directory set by the EXCEL_FILES_PATH environment variable. The function responsible for enforcing this boundary — get_excel_path() — fails to do so due to two independent flaws: it passes absolute paths through without any check, and it joins relative paths without resolving or validating the result. Combined with zero authentication on the default network-facing transport and a default bind address of 0.0.0.0 (all interfaces), this allows trivial remote exploitation. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.1.8.
CVSS vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:H
Attack vector
Network
Complexity
Low
Privileges
None
User interaction
None
Confidentiality
Low
Integrity
High
Availability
High
Scope
Unchanged
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.5% · higher than 40% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
EX
excel-mcp-server · haris-musa
< 0.1.8 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-40576
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-40576
github.com
https://github.com/haris-musa/excel-mcp-server/security/advisories/GHSA-j98m-w3xp-9f56
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