CVE-2026-55569 aqua: Archive extraction in aqua follows attacker-planted symlinks, allowing writes outside the install directory
A malicious archive can exploit symlink handling to write files outside the install directory, potentially leading to code execution or privilege escalation.
- Exploited in the wild
- Not known
- Login needed
- Not needed
- Attackable
- Local or same network only
- Victim action needed
- A user has to click or open something
- Fix
- Available
What is CVE-2026-55569?
CVE-2026-55569 is a medium-severity path traversal vulnerability in aquaproj aqua, published on 28 Aug 2026. It can only be exploited from the same machine or local network, and only if a user opens a file or follows a link.
Official description
aqua is a declarative command-line version manager written in Go. Prior to 2.60.1, pkg/unarchive/archives.go in the handler.HandleFile method calls os.Symlink with archives.FileInfo.LinkTarget without verifying that the target remains under the extraction destination. A later regular-file entry at the same archive path is opened with OpenFile using O_CREATE and O_WRONLY, which follows the attacker-planted symlink. A malicious or compromised package archive can therefore write attacker-controlled bytes outside aqua's extraction directory with the privileges of the user running aqua, potentially overwriting shell startup files, tool configuration, or writable executable paths. This issue is fixed in version 2.60.1.
Which versions are affected by CVE-2026-55569?
4 open source packages ship an affected version, including github.com/aquaproj/aqua/v2 and github.com/aquaproj/aqua.
| Package | Affected | Fixed in |
|---|---|---|
github.com/aquaproj/aqua/v2 Go | All versions | 2.60.1 |
github.com/aquaproj/aqua/v2 Go | All versions | 2.60.1 |
github.com/aquaproj/aqua/v2 Go | All versions | 2.60.1 |
github.com/aquaproj/aqua Go | All versions | None |
How do I fix CVE-2026-55569?
Upgrade github.com/aquaproj/aqua/v2 to 2.60.1 or later.
Upgrade, and resolve every user-supplied path against an allowed base folder before opening it. More about Path traversal.
Is CVE-2026-55569 being exploited?
It is not confirmed as exploited in the wild, but public exploit code for CVE-2026-55569 exists.
Sources
Also known as GHSA-mf5c-hw34-4hpp, GO-2026-6314.