Detections
Analytics
SCA: security update for tar (GHSA-qq89-hq3f-393p)
high Tenable Cloud Security Plugin ID 418267
Description
There are packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability referenced in the following CVE:- The npm package "tar" (aka node-tar) before versions 4.4.18, 5.0.10, and 6.1.9 has an arbitrary file
creation/overwrite and arbitrary code execution vulnerability. node-tar aims to guarantee that any file
whose location would be modified by a symbolic link is not extracted. This is, in part, achieved by
ensuring that extracted directories are not symlinks. Additionally, in order to prevent unnecessary stat
calls to determine whether a given path is a directory, paths are cached when directories are created.
This logic was insufficient when extracting tar files that contained both a directory and a symlink with
names containing unicode values that normalized to the same value. Additionally, on Windows systems, long
path portions would resolve to the same file system entities as their 8.3 "short path" counterparts. A
specially crafted tar archive could thus include a directory with one form of the path, followed by a
symbolic link with a different string that resolves to the same file system entity, followed by a file
using the first form. By first creating a directory, and then replacing that directory with a symlink that
had a different apparent name that resolved to the same entry in the filesystem, it was thus possible to
bypass node-tar symlink checks on directories, essentially allowing an untrusted tar file to symlink into
an arbitrary location and subsequently extracting arbitrary files into that location, thus allowing
arbitrary file creation and overwrite. These issues were addressed in releases 4.4.18, 5.0.10 and 6.1.9.
The v3 branch of node-tar has been deprecated and did not receive patches for these issues. If you are
still using a v3 release we recommend you update to a more recent version of node-tar. If this is not
possible, a workaround is available in the referenced GHSA-qq89-hq3f-393p. (CVE-2021-37712)
See Also
Plugin Details
Severity: High
ID: 418267
Version: Revision 1.6
Type: Local
Family: SCA Checks
Published: 1/23/2025
Updated: 7/2/2026
Supported Sensors: Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security
Risk Information
VPR
Risk Factor: Medium
Score: 5
Percentile: 94.66
Vendor
Vendor Severity: High
CVSS v2
Risk Factor: Medium
Base Score: 4.4
Temporal Score: 3.3
Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
CVSS Score Source: CVE-2021-37712
CVSS v3
Risk Factor: High
Base Score: 8.6
Temporal Score: 7.5
Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C
Vulnerability Information
Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available
Patch Publication Date: 8/31/2021
Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/31/2021
Reference Information
CVE: CVE-2021-37712