Medium 5.1Published Mar 20, 2026

CVE-2026-33056tar-rs: unpack_in can chmod arbitrary directories by following symlinks

Updated under an hour ago (Oct 27, 2026, 4:30 PM ET)

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Every CVE for alexcrichton tar-rs

Exploited in the last 30 days

tar-rs is a tar archive reading/writing library for Rust. In versions 0.4.44 and below, when unpacking a tar archive, the tar crate's unpack_dir function uses fs::metadata() to check whether a path that already exists is a directory. Because fs::metadata() follows symbolic links, a crafted tarball containing a symlink entry followed by a directory entry with the same name causes the crate to treat the symlink target as a valid existing directory — and subsequently apply chmod to it. This allows an attacker to modify the permissions of arbitrary directories outside the extraction root. This issue has been fixed in version 0.4.45.

CVSS: 5.1 MEDIUM (v4.0, CNA)CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Weakness (CWE): CWE-61
Known exploited: Not in CISA's KEV catalog
EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days): Not loaded for this CVE
Assigned by: GitHub_M
NVD analysis: Analyzed
Record last updated: Mar 20, 2026
First seen by InfoSec Signals: Oct 9, 2026

Affected products

Affected products

alexcrichton tar-rs alexcrichton:tar_rs (from the name)	before 0.4.45	CNA record
tar_project tar tar_project:tar	before 0.4.45	NVD

References

References

https://github.com/alexcrichton/tar-rs/security/advisories/GHSA-j4xf-2g29-59ph	x-refsource-confirm, exploit, mitigation, vendor-advisory
https://github.com/alexcrichton/tar-rs/commit/17b1fd84e632071cb8eef9d3709bf347bd266446	x-refsource-misc, patch

The CVE record on cve.org NVD's entry

The CVE record is authoritative. Products marked “from the name” were identified from the CNA's free-text names, not a CPE, and are matched less certainly. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.