CVE-2020-36193: PEAR Archive_Tar Improper Link Resolution Vulnerability

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: yes — in CISA KEV since 2022-08-25
EPSS: 70.6% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2021-01-18 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Tar.php in Archive_Tar through 1.4.11 allows write operations with Directory Traversal due to inadequate checking of symbolic links, a related issue to CVE-2020-28948.

Affected products

Debian Linux: 9.0, 10.0
Drupal: from 7.0 before 7.78; from 8.9.0 before 8.9.13; from 9.0.0 before 9.0.11; from 9.1.0 before 9.1.3 — fixed in 7.78, 8.9.13, 9.0.11, 9.1.3
Fedoraproject Fedora: 32, 33, 34, 35
php Archive Tar: through 1.4.11

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Drupal 7.78, 8.9.13, 9.0.11, 9.1.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://github.com/pear/Archive_Tar/commit/cde460582ff389404b5b3ccb59374e9b389de916
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/01/msg00018.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/04/msg00007.html
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/42GPGVVFTLJYAKRI75IVB5R45NYQGEUR/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/FOZNK4FIIV7FSFCJNNFWMJZTTV7NFJV2/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/VJQQYDAOWHD6RDITDRPHFW7WY6BS3V5N/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/package-announce%40lists.fedoraproject.org/message/YKD5WEFA4WT6AVTMRAYBNXZNLWZHM7FH/
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202101-23
https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4894
https://www.drupal.org/sa-core-2021-001
https://github.com/pear/Archive_Tar/commit/cde460582ff389404b5b3ccb59374e9b389de916
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/01/msg00018.html

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