Busybox: busybox: dpkg-deb extraction-root escape via per-ar-member deferred symlink flush

A flaw was found in BusyBox's dpkg-deb archive extraction. The ar archive handler flushes deferred symlinks after each archive member, unlike the tar, cpio, and unzip handlers which flush once after the last member. A specially crafted .deb archive with two data.tar members can exploit this ordering: the first member declares a symlink pointing to an absolute path (e.g., '/'), which is deferred as unsafe but flushed after the first member. The second member declares a regular file whose path traverses the now-live symlink, resulting in a file being written outside the intended extraction directory. This could allow an attacker to write arbitrary files to arbitrary locations when a user extracts a crafted .deb package.

Source published

14 Oct 2026 10:00:08 UTC

Source modified

19 Oct 2026 19:04:36 UTC

Observed here

23 Oct 2026 15:48:27 UTC

Source terms

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CVSS 3.1 · 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H