Path Traversal — A tour to the web server’s assets

Path traversal (directory traversal) is a web vulnerability that lets attackers read sensitive server files like /etc/passwd by manipulating URL parameters with relative path sequences (../). The post explains how the attack works on Linux servers, then covers five filter-bypass techniques: using absolute paths, single/double URL encoding, required directory prefix tricks, null byte injection to bypass extension filters, and nested traversal sequences (....//). Prevention advice includes whitelisting user input and canonicalizing paths before use.