CVE-2025-45582VulnerabilityPublished 11 Jul 2025Updated 2 Nov 2025

CVE-2025-45582: GNU Tar · Path Traversal: '../filedir'

Affects GNU TarSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 4.1 Medium.

Data as of 25 Oct 2026, 19:02 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

4.1Medium

How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.

EPSS: 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 41% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:L

Attack Vector: Local
Attack Complexity: High
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: Required
Scope: Changed
Confidentiality: None
Integrity: Low
Availability: Low

Bold values are the worst case: easiest to exploit or largest impact.

Attack Vector: Local: The vulnerable component is not bound to the network stack and the attacker’s path is via read/write/execute capabilities. Either: the attacker exploits the vulnerability by accessing the target system locally (e.g., keyboard, console), or remotely (e.g., SSH); or the attacker relies on User Interaction by another person to perform actions required to exploit the vulnerability (e.g., tricking a legitimate user into opening a malicious document).
Attack Complexity: High: A successful attack depends on conditions beyond the attacker's control. That is, a successful attack cannot be accomplished at will, but requires the attacker to invest in some measurable amount of effort in preparation or execution against the vulnerable component before a successful attack can be expected. For example, a successful attack may require an attacker to: gather knowledge about the environment in which the vulnerable target/component exists; prepare the target environment to improve exploit reliability; or inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim in order to read and/or modify network communications (e.g., a man in the middle attack).
Privileges Required: None: The attacker is unauthorized prior to attack, and therefore does not require any access to settings or files to carry out an attack.
User Interaction: Required: Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires a user to take some action before the vulnerability can be exploited.
Scope: Changed: An exploited vulnerability can affect resources beyond the security scope managed by the security authority of the vulnerable component. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are different and managed by different security authorities.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: Low: Modification of data is possible, but the attacker does not have control over the consequence of a modification, or the amount of modification is limited. The data modification does not have a direct, serious impact on the impacted component.
Availability: Low: Performance is reduced or there are interruptions in resource availability. Even if repeated exploitation of the vulnerability is possible, the attacker does not have the ability to completely deny service to legitimate users. The resources in the impacted component are either partially available all of the time, or fully available only some of the time, but overall there is no direct, serious consequence to the impacted component.

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 11 Jul 2025
Detectable: no evidence on record.
No public nuclei template indexed
Weaponised: no evidence on record.
No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB
Exploited in the wildExploited: no evidence on record.
Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation
Observed by OffSeq MirageSeen by Mirage: no evidence on record.
No attack traffic recorded by OffSeq Mirage sensors

A missing step is not evidence of safety. Sources: cve.org (opens in a new tab), the Metasploit, Exploit-DB and nuclei-templates index as of 2026-10-25.

Disclosed: The CVE record is public on cve.org. Its publication is t = 0.
Detectable: A public nuclei template can find exposed instances, for defenders and attackers alike.
Weaponised: Public exploit code exists in Metasploit or Exploit-DB, or CISA SSVC reports a public proof of concept.
Exploited in the wild: CISA KEV lists it, CISA SSVC rates exploitation active, or a source reports attacks.
Observed by OffSeq Mirage: OffSeq Mirage honeypot sensors recorded attack traffic for this CVE, or found exposed hosts without attack traffic.

Moments are spaced evenly, not to scale; a dashed line marks a gap of six months or more. Deltas count from t = 0. Sources that give only a date (CISA KEV, Exploit-DB, or a time of exactly 00:00Z) read “same day” rather than hours. Metasploit modules carry the flaw’s disclosure date, not their release date, and nuclei templates carry no date, so both appear above but not on the timeline.

What to do

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GNU Tar	Affected =0	Fixed in–

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-45582, European organizations should: 1) Avoid extracting multiple TAR archives into the same directory without cleaning or isolating the extraction environment between extractions. 2) Upgrade GNU Tar to a patched version once available that addresses this symlink traversal issue. 3) Implement strict validation of TAR archive contents before extraction, including checking for symbolic links and relative paths that could lead outside the intended extraction directory. 4) Use containerized or sandboxed environments for extracting untrusted archives to limit filesystem impact. 5) Employ file integrity monitoring on critical directories (e.g., ~/.ssh) to detect unauthorized modifications. 6) Where possible, replace automated extraction of user-supplied TAR files with more secure package management or artifact verification mechanisms. 7) Educate system administrators and developers about the risks of repeated 'tar xf' commands on untrusted archives and encourage following official GNU Tar security guidelines. 8) Monitor logs and audit extraction activities for suspicious patterns indicating attempted exploitation.

Description

GNU Tar through 1.35 allows file overwrite via directory traversal in crafted TAR archives, with a certain two-step process. First, the victim must extract an archive that contains a ../ symlink to a critical directory. Second, the victim must extract an archive that contains a critical file, specified via a relative pathname that begins with the symlink name and ends with that critical file's name. Here, the extraction follows the symlink and overwrites the critical file. This bypasses the protection mechanism of "Member name contains '..'" that would occur for a single TAR archive that attempted to specify the critical file via a ../ approach. For example, the first archive can contain "x -> ../../../../../home/victim/.ssh" and the second archive can contain x/authorized_keys. This can affect server applications that automatically extract any number of user-supplied TAR archives, and were relying on the blocking of traversal. This can also affect software installation processes in which "tar xf" is run more than once (e.g., when installing a package can automatically install two dependencies that are set up as untrusted tarballs instead of official packages). NOTE: the official GNU Tar manual has an otherwise-empty directory for each "tar xf" in its Security Rules of Thumb; however, third-party advice leads users to run "tar xf" more than once into the same directory.

Impact

For European organizations, the primary impact is the potential unauthorized modification of critical files, such as SSH authorized_keys, which can lead to privilege escalation or unauthorized remote access. This can compromise server integrity and availability, especially in environments that rely on automated extraction of multiple TAR archives from untrusted sources, such as CI/CD pipelines, package management systems, or multi-stage deployment processes. The vulnerability could also disrupt software installation or update processes, leading to service outages or compromised systems. Confidentiality impact is limited as the vulnerability does not directly expose data but could facilitate further attacks. Organizations using GNU Tar extensively in automated workflows or shared environments are at higher risk. The medium severity reflects the complexity of exploitation and the requirement for multiple archive extractions, but the potential for critical file overwrite makes it a significant concern for operational security.

Summary

CVE-2025-45582 is a path traversal vulnerability classified under CWE-24 affecting GNU Tar versions through 1.35. The vulnerability arises from the way GNU Tar handles symbolic links and relative paths during extraction of multiple TAR archives into the same directory. Normally, Tar blocks extraction of files with '..' in their member names to prevent directory traversal. However, this protection applies only per single archive extraction. An attacker can exploit this by first extracting a TAR archive containing a symbolic link entry (e.g., 'x -> ../../../../../home/victim/.ssh') that points outside the extraction directory to a critical directory. Then, by extracting a second TAR archive containing files with paths starting with the symlink name (e.g., 'x/authorized_keys'), the extraction process follows the symlink and overwrites files in the target directory. This two-step process bypasses the usual traversal checks and can lead to overwriting sensitive files such as SSH authorized_keys, enabling potential unauthorized access. The vulnerability is particularly relevant for server applications or automated systems that extract multiple user-supplied TAR archives into the same directory without resetting or isolating the extraction environment. It also affects software installation processes that run 'tar xf' multiple times on untrusted tarballs, such as package managers or dependency installers that do not verify archive contents or isolate extraction paths. The vulnerability requires local or limited user privileges to supply crafted archives and user interaction to trigger extraction. The CVSS 3.1 score is 4.1, reflecting a medium severity due to the need for multiple steps, user interaction, and limited confidentiality impact but potential integrity and availability impact through file overwrites. No public exploits are known at this time, but the vulnerability highlights a gap in tar's handling of symlinks across multiple extractions.

CWE-24Path Traversal: '../filedir' (opens in a new tab)
Variant weakness
The product uses external input to construct a pathname that should be within a restricted directory, but it does not properly neutralize "../" sequences that can resolve to a location that is outside of that directory.
Implementation · Input Validation
Assume all input is malicious. Use an "accept known good" input validation strategy, i.e., use a list of acceptable inputs that strictly conform to specifications. Reject any input that does not strictly conform to specifications, or transform it into something that does.
Implementation · Input Validation
Inputs should be decoded and canonicalized to the application's current internal representation before being validated (CWE-180). Make sure that the application does not decode the same input twice (CWE-174).
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.3.1 (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 2 Nov 2025, 04:07 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-24

Technical details

References

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