This vulnerability in libarchive arises from improper handling of a malformed SUN.holesdata sparse-file attribute in PAX extended headers during tar archive parsing, leading to a heap overflow. An attacker must provide a crafted tar archive and rely on a user or automated system to parse it using libarchive. While the heap overflow could theoretically allow arbitrary code execution, in practice it more commonly results in a denial of service due to application crashes. Red Hat has issued security updates for libarchive in Red Hat Hardened Images to fix this flaw.

Successful exploitation can cause denial of service by crashing the application parsing the archive, potentially making the system unavailable. Although arbitrary code execution is possible, it is difficult to achieve reliably and depends on specific memory layouts and protections. The vulnerability requires local access or user interaction to trigger, limiting remote exploitation. The CVSS score assigned by Red Hat is 3.9 (low severity) reflecting these factors.

Red Hat has released updated libarchive packages (version 3.8.8-2.1.hum1) for Red Hat Hardened Images that fix this vulnerability. Users should apply these updates promptly. Additionally, users should avoid processing untrusted or unverified tar archives to mitigate risk. No other specific mitigations are noted in the advisory.