Medium severity · published Aug 10, 2026
CVE-2026-66484
Path Traversal in GNU cpio
4.6
CVSS
0.2%
EPSS
No
On KEV
Description
GNU cpio contains a Path Traversal vulnerability in its tar archive extraction functionality. When extracting a tar archive in copy-in mode with the --no-absolute-filenames option, the extracted file name is normalized but the tar hard-link target is passed to the link_to_name function without equivalent sanitization before calling link function. A tar archive provided by an attacker, containing a hard-link entry whose linkname is set to an absolute path outside the extraction directory, can cause cpio to create a hard link to an existing file outside the intended extraction directory, breaking the expected guarantee of --no-absolute-filenames and allowing archive-controlled linkage to external files.
This issue has been fixed in commit e2b9cbdd3354d2b1569b7390d1bc15c1930559ad
Exploitation
Is it being used?
Exploit prediction (EPSS)0.2% · higher than 9% of CVEs
Exploited in the wildNo evidence yet
CISA KEVNot listed
Ransomware campaign useNot known
Affected products
Which versions
CP
cpio · GNU
through 2.15 · source: vendor
References
NVD
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-66484
CVE.org
https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-66484
cert.pl
https://cert.pl/en/posts/2026/08/CVE-2026-66484
git.savannah.gnu.org
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/cpio.git
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