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SCA: security update for tar (GHSA-r628-mhmh-qjhw)

high Tenable Cloud Security Plugin ID 418517

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 6.1.2, 5.0.7, 4.4.15, and 3.2.3 has an arbitrary File
 Creation/Overwrite vulnerability via insufficient symlink protection. `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 the same name as the directory. This order of operations resulted in the directory being
 created and added to the `node-tar` directory cache. When a directory is present in the directory cache,
 subsequent calls to mkdir for that directory are skipped. However, this is also where `node-tar` checks
 for symlinks occur. By first creating a directory, and then replacing that directory with a symlink, 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. This issue was addressed in releases 3.2.3,
 4.4.15, 5.0.7 and 6.1.2. (CVE-2021-32803)

See Also

https://github.com/advisories/GHSA-r628-mhmh-qjhw

Plugin Details

Severity: High

ID: 418517

Version: Revision 1.7

Type: Local

Family: SCA Checks

Published: 1/23/2025

Updated: 7/10/2026

Supported Sensors: Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Medium

Score: 6.3

Percentile: 96.77

Vendor

Vendor Severity: High

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.8

Temporal Score: 4.3

Vector: CVSS2#AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:P

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2021-32803

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: High

Base Score: 8.1

Temporal Score: 7.1

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:N/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: 8/3/2021

Vulnerability Publication Date: 8/3/2021

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2021-32803