CVE-2021-38511

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2021-08-10 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-59

Description

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.

Affected products

Tar Project Tar: before 0.4.36 — fixed in 0.4.36

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Tar Project Tar 0.4.36. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rustsec/advisory-db/main/crates/tar/RUSTSEC-2021-0080.md
https://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2021-0080.html
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/rustsec/advisory-db/main/crates/tar/RUSTSEC-2021-0080.md
https://rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2021-0080.html

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