CVE-2026-42497 Path traversal in Archive::Tar
Attackers can extract hardlinks to arbitrary files, allowing modification of victim files and potential privilege escalation via shared inodes.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Over the internet
- Victim action needed
- Not needed
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-42497?
CVE-2026-42497 is a high-severity path traversal vulnerability in BINGOS Archive::Tar, published on 26 May 2026. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.
Official description
Archive::Tar versions before 3.08 for Perl extract hardlinks to attacker controlled paths outside the extraction directory.
_make_special_file() passes the tar header's linkname to link() without validating it against absolute paths or .. segments, creating a hardlink that shares the victim file's inode.
A subsequent write through the extracted name modifies the victim file, and the post-extraction chmod, chown, and utime block in _extract_file() (guarded only against symlinks via -l) applies the tar header's mode, owner, and timestamps to the shared inode during extraction alone.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-42497?
It affects 1 product.
Products include Archive\ \.
How do I fix CVE-2026-42497?
Upgrade to a fixed version.
Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.
Is CVE-2026-42497 being exploited?
There is no known exploitation of CVE-2026-42497 in the wild and no public exploit code.
Other vulnerabilities in BINGOS Archive::Tar
Sources
Also known as AZL-89136, BELL-CVE-2026-42497, DEBIAN-CVE-2026-42497, ECHO-cfd1-a043-7d5c, GHSA-fcfm-93gv-wh6f, ROOT-OS-DEBIAN-11-CVE-2026-42497 and 1 more.