VulnerabilityPublished 5 Nov 2025

CVE-2025-60753: libarchive · CVE-2025-60753 is a medium severity

Affects libarchiveSource CVE Database V5

Not known to be exploited · CVSS 5.5 Medium : upgrade to 3.8.1 when convenient.

Data as of 26 Oct 2026, 10:12 UTC

CVSS 3.1 base score

5.5Medium

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

EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 10% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch: Available – fixed in 3.8.1

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

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

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: Low: Specialized access conditions or extenuating circumstances do not exist. An attacker can expect repeatable success against the vulnerable component.
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: Unchanged: An exploited vulnerability can only affect resources managed by the same security authority. In this case, the vulnerable component and the impacted component are either the same, or both are managed by the same security authority.
Confidentiality: None: There is no loss of confidentiality within the impacted component.
Integrity: None: There is no loss of integrity within the impacted component.
Availability: High: There is total loss of availability, resulting in the attacker being able to fully deny access to resources in the impacted component; this loss is either sustained (while the attacker continues to deliver the attack) or persistent (the condition persists even after the attack has completed). Alternatively, the attacker has the ability to deny some availability, but the loss of availability presents a direct, serious consequence to the impacted component (e.g., the attacker cannot disrupt existing connections, but can prevent new connections; the attacker can repeatedly exploit a vulnerability that, in each instance of a successful attack, leaks a only small amount of memory, but after repeated exploitation causes a service to become completely unavailable).

Definitions: FIRST CVSS v3.1 specification.

Exploitation evidence

Disclosed: evidence found.
CVE published 5 Nov 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 26 Oct 2026.

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 or the CVSS exploit maturity 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

Upgrade libarchive/libarchive to 3.8.1.

Affected software

Product	Affected	Fixed in
GitHublibarchive/libarchive`pkg:github/libarchive/libarchive`Other threats	Affected <3.8.1	Fixed in 3.8.1

Check your own hosts for these packages with threat-finder (opens in a new tab), our free open-source scanner.

AI-suggested

To mitigate CVE-2025-60753, European organizations should promptly upgrade libarchive to version 3.8.1 or later, where the vulnerability has been addressed. If you cannot patch yet, restrict the use of bsdtar for processing archives from untrusted sources, especially those employing -s substitution rules. Implement strict input validation and sandboxing for archive extraction processes to limit resource consumption and isolate potential crashes. Monitoring system memory usage during extraction tasks can help detect abnormal behavior early. Additionally, review and harden user permissions to prevent unauthorized local access that could trigger exploitation. For automated workflows, consider alternative extraction tools that are not affected by this vulnerability or disable substitution rule processing if not required. Regularly audit and update third-party libraries to maintain security hygiene.

Description

CVE-2025-60753 is a medium severity vulnerability in libarchive's bsdtar utility prior to version 3.8.1. It arises from improper handling of crafted -s substitution rules in the apply_substitution function, leading to unbounded memory allocation. This flaw can cause an Out-of-Memory (OOM) crash, resulting in a denial of service. Exploitation requires local access and user interaction, with no impact on confidentiality or integrity. No known exploits are currently in the wild. European organizations using vulnerable versions of bsdtar, especially in environments processing untrusted tar archives, may face service disruptions. Mitigation involves updating to libarchive 3.8.

Impact

For European organizations, the primary impact of CVE-2025-60753 is the potential for denial of service due to bsdtar crashing from excessive memory allocation. This can disrupt automated processes that rely on archive extraction, such as software deployment pipelines, backup restoration, or data ingestion workflows. Organizations processing untrusted or user-supplied tar archives with substitution rules are particularly at risk. While the vulnerability does not allow data theft or modification, service interruptions can affect operational continuity and availability of critical systems. In sectors like finance, healthcare, and government, where uptime and data processing reliability are crucial, such disruptions could have significant operational and reputational consequences. Additionally, if exploited in multi-tenant environments or shared infrastructure, it could lead to broader service degradation. However, the requirement for local access and user interaction limits remote exploitation risks, reducing the threat surface for many organizations.

CWE-835Loop with Unreachable Exit Condition ('Infinite Loop') (opens in a new tab)
Base weakness
The product contains an iteration or loop with an exit condition that cannot be reached, i.e., an infinite loop.
CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource Consumption (opens in a new tab)
Class weaknessLikelihood of exploit: High
The product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
MITRE discourages mapping vulnerabilities to this broad entry; the root cause is usually a more specific weakness.
Architecture and Design
Design throttling mechanisms into the system architecture. The best protection is to limit the amount of resources that an unauthorized user can cause to be expended. A strong authentication and access control model will help prevent such attacks from occurring in the first place.
Architecture and Design
Mitigation of resource exhaustion attacks requires that the target system either: recognizes the attack and denies that user further access for a given amount of time, or; uniformly throttles all requests in order to make it more difficult to consume resources more quickly than they can again be freed.
Architecture and Design
Ensure that protocols have specific limits of scale placed on them.
OWASP Cheat Sheets
File Upload (opens in a new tab)
OWASP ASVS 4.0.3
V12.1.1 (opens in a new tab)
Attack patterns
XML Ping of the Death (opens in a new tab)
Regular Expression Exponential Blowup (opens in a new tab)
Sustained Client Engagement (opens in a new tab)
From MITRE CWE, MITRE CAPEC and OWASP (Top 10, OpenCRE).

References

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Exploitation evidence

What to do

Affected software

Description

AI analysisMachine-generated, updated 12 Nov 2025, 16:19 UTC

WeaknessesCWE-835, CWE-400

Technical details

References

Community reviews

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