CVE-2026-90954
Published: October 20, 2026Last modified: October 20, 2026
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.
Severity score breakdown
| Parameter | Value |
|---|---|
| Base score | 7.8 |
| Attack Vector | LOCAL |
| Attack complexity | LOW |
| Privileges required | NONE |
| User interaction | REQUIRED |
| Scope | UNCHANGED |
| Confidentiality | HIGH |
| Integrity impact | HIGH |
| Availability impact | HIGH |
| Vector | CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H |
Status
| Product | Release | Package | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alpaquita Linux | 23 LTS | busybox | Not affected (1.35.0-r29) |
| 25 LTS | busybox | Not affected (1.37.0-r20) | |
| Stream | busybox | Not affected (1.36.1-r1) |