Microsoft Kiota: Path traversal in generated plugin manifest static_template.file reference (percent-encoding bypass)

Impact

Kiota generates AI plugin manifests from an OpenAPI description. When the description contains an x-ai-capabilities response semantics static_template (or the adaptive-card extension x-ai-adaptive-card), the file reference is written into the generated manifest's response_semantics.static_template.file and is later resolved by the AI host relative to the plugin package.

An attacker who controls or tampers with the OpenAPI description consumed by Kiota can supply a file reference that resolves outside the manifest package (e.g. ../../../../etc/passwd, an absolute path, or a file:// / http(s):// URI). When the generated manifest is deployed and consumed by an AI host, this can lead to inclusion or disclosure of files outside the intended package boundary (CWE-22 Path Traversal, CWE-829 Inclusion of Functionality from an Untrusted Control Sphere).

A mitigation shipped in v1.32.5 (ExtensionResponseSemanticsStaticTemplate.IsSafeFileReference) rejected literal traversal, rooted paths, drive-qualified paths, and absolute URIs. However, that check inspected the raw reference string, so percent-encoded payloads bypassed every check and were still emitted verbatim. Examples that were incorrectly accepted as safe:

Input	Decodes to
%2e%2e/card.json	../card.json
..%2f..%2f..%2f..%2f..%2f..%2fetc%2fpasswd	../../../../../../etc/passwd
file%3A%2F%2F%2Fetc%2Fpasswd	file:///etc/passwd
%2e%2e%2f%2e%2e%2f%2e%2e%2fetc%2fpasswd	../../../etc/passwd

Multi-level (double) encoding such as %252e%252e%252fcard.json was also affected. A follow-up review found additional residual bypasses of the same validator: an embedded NUL byte () that truncated the path and defeated the parent-directory segment check, encoding nested deeper than the decode budget (which failed open), and Unicode full-width homoglyphs (e.g. → ).