__link__ | -page-....-2f-2f....-2f-2f....-2f-2fetc-2fpasswd
Unmasking the Payload: Anatomy of a Path Traversal Attack In the world of web security, a string like -page-....-2F-2F....-2F-2F....-2F-2Fetc-2Fpasswd is not just gibberish—it is a classic signature of a Path Traversal
$page = $_GET['page']; include("/var/www/html/" . $page); -page-....-2F-2F....-2F-2F....-2F-2Fetc-2Fpasswd
An attacker submits ?page=....-2F-2F....-2F-2F....-2F-2Fetc-2Fpasswd . After URL decoding, the server builds: /var/www/html/../../../../etc/passwd → normalized to /etc/passwd . Unmasking the Payload: Anatomy of a Path Traversal
Sanitize Inputs
: Ensure that user-provided input is never used directly to build file paths. include("/var/www/html/" . $page)