CVE-2026-73566: node-tar: Uncontrolled recursion in mapHas/filesFilter allows uncatchable stack-overflow DoS via crafted long-path tar with member selection

Severity: high (CVSS 7.5 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2026-08-13 · updated 2026-10-24
Weakness: CWE-400

Description

node-tar is a tar archive manipulation library for Node.js. Prior to 7.5.21, node-tar's filesFilter in src/list.ts uses the recursive mapHas helper to walk an archive entry path upward with path.dirname() and no segment cap when tar.t(...) or tar.x(...) receives a non-empty member-selection list. A crafted GNU L or PAX x long-path header with thousands of slash-separated segments reaches this.filter(entry.path, entry) in Parser[CONSUMEHEADER] in src/parse.ts before Unpack[CHECKPATH] applies maxDepth, causing an uncatchable RangeError stack overflow that terminates asynchronous and streaming Node.js consumers. This issue is fixed in version 7.5.21.

Affected products

Npm Tar: before 7.5.21 — fixed in 7.5.21
isaacs node-tar: before 7.5.21

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Npm Tar 7.5.21. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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