Vulnerability Analysis: CVE-2026-71209 Audiobookshelf Authentication Bypass & Path Traversal
Introduction Audiobookshelf is a widely popular, open-source self-hosted media server designed for managing and streaming audiobooks and podcasts. Due to its active open-source community, rich feature set, and frequent updates, it has become a central component in many home labs and self-hosted server environments worldwide. However, security researchers recently uncovered a critical vulnerability—tracked as CVE-2026-71209—which allows remote, unauthenticated attackers to completely bypass authentication checks. By