Description
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.
References2
Metrics
- CVSS 3.1
-
7.8
HIGH
Score source: CNA
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H - EPSS — exploit probability
- 0% percentile: 15 · as of 11 November 2026
- CWE
- CWE-59
Could this be exploited in your environment?
A patch closes the known hole. A penetration test shows what an attacker can still reach — with proof.