What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2016-6321

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 15.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2016-12-09 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Directory traversal vulnerability in the safer_name_suffix function in GNU tar 1.14 through 1.29 might allow remote attackers to bypass an intended protection mechanism and write to arbitrary files via vectors related to improper sanitization of the file_name parameter, aka POINTYFEATHER.

Affected products

• GNU Tar: 1.14, 1.15, 1.15.1, 1.15.90, 1.15.91, 1.16 (+15)

References

• http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/tar.git/commit/?id=7340f67b9860ea0531c1450e5aa261c50f67165d
• http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2016-10/msg00016.html
• http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/139370/GNU-tar-1.29-Extract-Pathname-Bypass.html
• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Oct/102
• http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2016/Oct/96
• http://www.debian.org/security/2016/dsa-3702
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/93937
• http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-3132-1
• https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/r58af02e294bd07f487e2c64ffc0a29b837db5600e33b6e698b9d696b%40%3Cissues.bookkeeper.apache.org%3E
• https://lists.apache.org/thread.html/rf4c02775860db415b4955778a131c2795223f61cb8c6a450893651e4%40%3Cissues.bookkeeper.apache.org%3E
• https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201611-19
• https://sintonen.fi/advisories/tar-extract-pathname-bypass.proper.txt

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