CVE-2021-37701

A flaw was found in the npm package "tar" (aka node-tar). Extracting tar files that contain both a directory and a symlink with the same name, where the symlink and directory names in the archive entry used backslashes as a path separator, made it possible to bypass node-tar symlink checks on directories. This flaw allows an untrusted tar file to extract and overwrite files into an arbitrary location. A similar confusion can arise on case-insensitive filesystems. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to integrity and system availability.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux version 8 and Red Hat Software Collection both embed node-tar in the npm command. However, npm explicitly prevents the extraction of symlink via a filter. npm might still be affected via node-gyp, if the attacker is able to control the target URL.

The CVSS score(s) listed for this vulnerability do not reflect the associated product's status, and are included for informational purposes to better understand the severity of this vulnerability.