GNU Tar: Directory traversal vulnerability

Background

The GNU Tar program provides the ability to create tar archives, as well as various other kinds of manipulation.

Description

Dmitry V. Levin discovered a directory traversal vulnerability in the contains_dot_dot() function in file src/names.c.

Impact

By enticing a user to extract a specially crafted tar archive, a remote attacker could extract files to arbitrary locations outside of the specified directory with the permissions of the user running GNU Tar.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All GNU Tar users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-arch/tar-1.18-r2"