What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities
CVE-2026-27976: Zed Extension Sandbox Escape via Tar Symlink Following
- Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
- Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
- EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
- Public exploit or detection template: yes
- Published: 2026-02-26 · updated 2026-06-17
- Weakness: CWE-61
Description
Zed, a code editor, has an extension installer allows tar/gzip downloads. Prior to version 0.224.4, the tar extractor (`async_tar::Archive::unpack`) creates symlinks from the archive without validation, and the path guard (`writeable_path_from_extension`) only performs lexical prefix checks without resolving symlinks. An attacker can ship a tar that first creates a symlink inside the extension workdir pointing outside (e.g., `escape -> /`), then writes files through the symlink, causing writes to arbitrary host paths. This escapes the extension sandbox and enables code execution. Version 0.224.4 patches the issue.
Affected products
- zed-industries zed: before 0.224.4 — fixed in 0.224.4
How to fix
Upgrade to a fixed version: zed-industries zed 0.224.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.
References
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