CVE-2019-20907

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 3.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-07-13 · updated 2026-10-14
Weakness: CWE-835

Description

In Lib/tarfile.py in Python through 3.8.3, an attacker is able to craft a TAR archive leading to an infinite loop when opened by tarfile.open, because _proc_pax lacks header validation.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04, 14.04, 16.04, 18.04, 20.04
Debian Linux: 9.0
Fedoraproject Fedora: 31, 32
Active IQ Unified Manager for VMware vSphere, Linux, and Microsoft Windows: from 9.5
NetApp Cloud Volumes Ontap Mediator: all versions
openSUSE Leap: 15.1, 15.2
Oracle Corporation Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance Kit: 8.8
Python: from 3.5.0 before 3.5.10; from 3.6.0 before 3.6.12; from 3.7.0 before 3.7.9; from 3.8.0 before 3.8.5 — fixed in 3.5.10, 3.6.12, 3.7.9, 3.8.5

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Python 3.5.10, 3.6.12, 3.7.9, 3.8.5. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2019-20907 or the next vulnerability affects your stack