CVE-2025-45582

A flaw was found in GNU Tar. An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by providing two specially crafted TAR archives, if those archives were extracted in the same directory. The first archive contains a symbolic link that points to a critical directory. The second archive, when extracted, uses this symbolic link to overwrite sensitive files on the system, bypassing existing directory traversal protections. This could lead to unauthorized file modification or, in some cases, privilege escalation.

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.

Untrusted TAR archives should always be extracted in an empty directory. When multiple untrusted archives need to be extracted, the same directory must not be re-used without removing all content extracted form the previous archive before extracting the next archive.