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VulnerabilityPublished

CVE-2026-53655: isaacs node-tar · Interpretation Conflict

Affects isaacs node-tarSource CVE Database V5

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Not known to be exploited · CVSS 6.9 Medium : upgrade to 7.5.16 when convenient.

Data as of 5 Nov 2026, 00:01 UTC

CVSS 4.0 base score
6.9Medium
How severe the flaw is on the 0–10 CVSS scale.
EPSS
0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days – higher than 4% of CVEsExploit Prediction Scoring System: the likelihood attackers will use this flaw soon.
Patch
Available – fixed in 7.5.16
CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:H/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Exploitation evidence

  1. Disclosed: evidence found.

    CVE published 22 Jun 2026

  2. Detectable: no evidence on record.

    No public nuclei template indexed

  3. Weaponized: no evidence on record.

    No public exploit code indexed in Metasploit or Exploit-DB

  4. Exploited in the wild: no evidence on record.

    Not in CISA KEV and no source reports exploitation

  5. Observed by OffSeq 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 5 Nov 2026.

What to do

Upgrade isaacs node-tar to 7.5.16.

Affected software

ProductAffectedFixed in
isaacsnode-tarAffected
  • <7.5.16
Fixed in
  • 7.5.16

AI-suggested

This vulnerability is fixed in node-tar version 7.5.16. Users should upgrade to version 7.5.16 or later to remediate this issue. No other mitigation is indicated by the vendor advisory.

Description

node-tar is a full-featured Tar for Node.js. Prior to 7.5.16, tar (node-tar) applies a PAX extended header's size= record (and other PAX overrides) to the next header entry of any type, including intermediary metadata headers such as a GNU long-name (L) or long-link (K) entry. Per POSIX pax, a PAX extended header (x) describes the next file entry, not the intermediary extension headers that may sit between the x header and the file it annotates. Because node-tar lets the PAX size override the byte length of an intervening L/K/x header, an attacker can desynchronize node-tar's stream cursor relative to every other mainstream tar implementation (GNU tar, libarchive/bsdtar, Python tarfile, and the now-fixed tar-rs / astral-tokio-tar). The result is a tar parser interpretation differential (CWE-436): a single crafted archive yields a different set of members under node-tar than under the reference tar tools. An attacker can use this to hide a member from one parser while it is visible to another, which defeats security tooling whose scanner and extractor disagree on archive contents (e.g. a malware/secret scanner that lists entries with one library while a downstream step extracts with another) This vulnerability is fixed in 7.5.16.

References

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