GNU Tar up to 1.35 TAR Archive path traversal

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability described as problematic has been identified in GNU Tar up to 1.35. This impacts an unknown function of the component TAR Archive Handler. Such manipulation leads to path traversal. This vulnerability is referenced as CVE-2025-45582. It is possible to launch the attack remotely. No exploit is available.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in GNU Tar up to 1.35. It has been rated as problematic. Affected by this issue is an unknown code block of the component TAR Archive Handler. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a path traversal vulnerability. Using CWE to declare the problem leads to CWE-24. The product uses external input to construct a pathname that should be within a restricted directory, but it does not properly neutralize "../" sequences that can resolve to a location that is outside of that directory. Impacted is integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

GNU Tar through 1.35 allows file overwrite via directory traversal in crafted TAR archives, with a certain two-step process. First, the victim must extract an archive that contains a ../ symlink to a critical directory. Second, the victim must extract an archive that contains a critical file, specified via a relative pathname that begins with the symlink name and ends with that critical file's name. Here, the extraction follows the symlink and overwrites the critical file. This bypasses the protection mechanism of "Member name contains '..'" that would occur for a single TAR archive that attempted to specify the critical file via a ../ approach. For example, the first archive can contain "x -> ../../../../../home/victim/.ssh" and the second archive can contain x/authorized_keys. This can affect server applications that automatically extract any number of user-supplied TAR archives, and were relying on the blocking of traversal. This can also affect software installation processes in which "tar xf" is run more than once (e.g., when installing a package can automatically install two dependencies that are set up as untrusted tarballs instead of official packages). NOTE: the official GNU Tar manual has an otherwise-empty directory for each "tar xf" in its Security Rules of Thumb; however, third-party advice leads users to run "tar xf" more than once into the same directory.

The advisory is shared for download at github.com. This vulnerability is handled as CVE-2025-45582 since 04/22/2025. The exploitation is known to be difficult. The attack may be launched remotely. No form of authentication is required for exploitation. Successful exploitation requires user interaction by the victim. There are neither technical details nor an exploit publicly available. The current price for an exploit might be approx. USD $0-$5k (estimation calculated on 02/09/2026). The MITRE ATT&CK project declares the attack technique as T1006.

The vulnerability scanner Nessus provides a plugin with the ID 281751 (AlmaLinux 10 : tar (ALSA-2026:0002)), which helps to determine the existence of the flaw in a target environment.

There is no information about possible countermeasures known. It may be suggested to replace the affected object with an alternative product.

The vulnerability is also documented in the databases at Tenable (281751), EUVD (EUVD-2025-21178) and CERT Bund (WID-SEC-2026-0008). VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

Affected

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• Oracle Linux
• RESF Rocky Linux
• IBM App Connect Enterprise
• IBM MQ

Productinfo

Vendor

• GNU

Name

• Tar

Version

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 1.2
• 1.3
• 1.4
• 1.5
• 1.6
• 1.7
• 1.8
• 1.9
• 1.10
• 1.11
• 1.12
• 1.13
• 1.14
• 1.15
• 1.16
• 1.17
• 1.18
• 1.19
• 1.20
• 1.21
• 1.22
• 1.23
• 1.24
• 1.25
• 1.26
• 1.27
• 1.28
• 1.29
• 1.30
• 1.31
• 1.32
• 1.33
• 1.34
• 1.35

License

• open-source

Website

• Vendor: https://www.gnu.org/

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒
• 🔒

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

VulDB is the best source for vulnerability data and more expert information about this specific topic.

Discussion