# CVE-2022-36113: Extracting malicious crates can corrupt arbitrary files > A malicious Rust crate can corrupt arbitrary files on the developer's machine via symlink handling during package extraction. - **Severity:** Medium 4.6 (`CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L`) - **Exploited in the wild:** Not known - **Login needed:** Any signed-in user - **Attackable:** Over the internet - **Victim action needed:** A user has to click or open something - **Fix available:** Yes - **Published:** 14 Sep 2022 - **Updated:** 23 Apr 2025 - **Also known as:** DEBIAN-CVE-2022-36113, GHSA-rfj2-q3h3-hm5j, UBUNTU-CVE-2022-36113 ## What is CVE-2022-36113? CVE-2022-36113 is a medium-severity path traversal vulnerability in rust-lang cargo, published on 14 Sep 2022. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link. ### Official description Cargo is a package manager for the rust programming language. After a package is downloaded, Cargo extracts its source code in the ~/.cargo folder on disk, making it available to the Rust projects it builds. To record when an extraction is successful, Cargo writes "ok" to the .cargo-ok file at the root of the extracted source code once it extracted all the files. It was discovered that Cargo allowed packages to contain a .cargo-ok symbolic link, which Cargo would extract. Then, when Cargo attempted to write "ok" into .cargo-ok, it would actually replace the first two bytes of the file the symlink pointed to with ok. This would allow an attacker to corrupt one file on the machine using Cargo to extract the package. Note that by design Cargo allows code execution at build time, due to build scripts and procedural macros. The vulnerabilities in this advisory allow performing a subset of the possible damage in a harder to track down way. Your dependencies must still be trusted if you want to be protected from attacks, as it's possible to perform the same attacks with build scripts and procedural macros. The vulnerability is present in all versions of Cargo. Rust 1.64, to be released on September 22nd, will include a fix for it. Since the vulnerability is just a more limited way to accomplish what a malicious build scripts or procedural macros can do, we decided not to publish Rust point releases backporting the security fix. Patch files are available for Rust 1.63.0 are available in the wg-security-response repository for people building their own toolchain. Mitigations We recommend users of alternate registries to exercise care in which package they download, by only including trusted dependencies in their projects. Please note that even with these vulnerabilities fixed, by design Cargo allows arbitrary code execution at build time thanks to build scripts and procedural macros: a malicious dependency will be able to cause damage regardless of these vulnerabilities. crates.io implemented server-side checks to reject these kinds of packages years ago, and there are no packages on crates.io exploiting these vulnerabilities. crates.io users still need to exercise care in choosing their dependencies though, as remote code execution is allowed by design there as well. Weakness: CWE-59 (Improper Link Resolution Before File Access), CWE-22 (Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory) ## Which versions are affected by CVE-2022-36113? 4 open source packages ship an affected version, including cargo. It affects 1 product. | Package | Ecosystem | Affected | Fixed in | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | `cargo` | crates.io | All versions | 0.65.0 | | `cargo` | crates.io | All versions | 0.65.0 | | `cargo` | crates.io | From 0.66.0 | 0.67.0 | | `cargo` | crates.io | From 0.66.0 | 0.67.0 | Products: Rust-Lang Cargo. ## How do I fix CVE-2022-36113? Upgrade cargo to a fixed version for your release line: 0.65.0 or 0.67.0. ## Is CVE-2022-36113 being exploited? There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-36113 in the wild and no public exploit code. ## Other vulnerabilities in rust-lang cargo - [CVE-2026-5223](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-5223/): Crates in third party registries can override the cached source of other crates (medium 6.5) - [CVE-2022-46176](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-46176/): Cargo did not verify SSH host keys (medium 5.3) - [CVE-2022-36114](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-36114/): Extracting malicious crates can fill the file system (medium 4.8) - [CVE-2026-5222](https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2026-5222/): Cargo can be coerced to share credentials between registries (low 2.3) ## Fix prompt for AI coding agents ```text Check this codebase for CVE-2022-36113 and fix it if it is affected. What it is: CVE-2022-36113 is a medium-severity path traversal vulnerability in rust-lang cargo, published on 14 Sep 2022. Any signed-in user can exploit it over the network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link. Exploitation: There is no known exploitation of CVE-2022-36113 in the wild and no public exploit code. Affected packages and fixed versions: - cargo (crates.io): affected all versions; fixed in 0.65.0 - cargo (crates.io): affected all versions; fixed in 0.65.0 - cargo (crates.io): affected from 0.66.0; fixed in 0.67.0 - cargo (crates.io): affected from 0.66.0; fixed in 0.67.0 Task: 1. Search the dependency manifests and lockfiles (for example package.json, package-lock.json, requirements.txt, poetry.lock, uv.lock, pom.xml, build.gradle, go.mod, Cargo.lock, Gemfile.lock) and any Dockerfiles for the affected packages, including transitive dependencies. 2. If an affected version is in use, upgrade it to the fixed version for its release line with the project's package manager, so the lockfile is regenerated. Prefer the smallest upgrade that fixes it. 3. If there is no fix, or the upgrade would break the build, do not guess: explain the risk and the safest workaround instead. 4. Run the tests and summarise what changed and why. 5. If nothing in the project is affected, say so and change nothing. Reference: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-36113/ (Markdown: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-36113/index.md) ``` ## Sources - CVE record: https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2022-36113 - NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2022-36113 - OSV: https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2022-36113 --- From sbomify Insights: https://insights.sbomify.com/CVE-2022-36113/ Summaries are generated and may contain mistakes; the official description above is the record.