Bug 2498667 - CVE-2026-53655 bootc: node-tar: File smuggling due to inconsistent tar archive parsing [fedora-all]
Summary: CVE-2026-53655 bootc: node-tar: File smuggling due to inconsistent tar archiv...
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED NOTABUG
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: bootc
Version: rawhide
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
medium
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Colin Walters
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard: {"flaws": ["7abc3652-346a-4378-8182-5...
Depends On:
Blocks: CVE-2026-53655
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2026-07-09 20:06 UTC by Jon Weiser
Modified: 2026-07-10 13:38 UTC (History)
7 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2026-07-10 13:38:14 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


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Description Jon Weiser 2026-07-09 20:06:19 UTC
Disclaimer: Community trackers are created by Red Hat Product Security team on a best effort basis. Package maintainers are required to ascertain if the flaw indeed affects their package, before starting the update process.

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.

Comment 1 John Eckersberg 2026-07-10 13:38:14 UTC
As best as I can tell, bootc got lumped into this because the description mentions tar-rs, but only to point out that tar-rs suffered from the same issue but was previously fixed.  Bootc doesn't use Node.js / node-tar.


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