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CVE-2026-90954

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

Published
Last modified
published
Not listed in CISA KEV
None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
  • Exploitation: none
  • Automatable: no
  • Technical impact: total

Summary

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.

Timeline

  1. CVE published
  2. CISA SSVC assessment

    Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: total

  3. Record last updated

Affected versions

  • busybox

    Version range not reported

References 2

access.redhat.com

bugzilla.redhat.com