CVE-2026-26158
HighCVSS 7.0Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk6th percentile - higher than 6% of all known CVEs
Summary
A flaw was found in BusyBox allowing an attacker to modify files outside the intended extraction directory via a crafted tar archive with unvalidated hardlink or symlink entries. Extraction with elevated privileges can lead to privilege escalation.
Risk Assessment
An attacker could gain unauthorized access to critical system files, potentially leading to full system compromise if the archive is extracted with administrative privileges.
Recommendation
Update BusyBox to the patched version immediately and avoid extracting tar archives from untrusted sources with elevated privileges.
Other vulnerabilities in BusyBox
See all- CVE-2026-88838Medium
A flaw was found in BusyBox's mount utility. A non-root user can bypass mount security restrictions set in /etc/fstab by specifying clearing-mask options on the command line. These options pass the non-root flag filter and are merged with fstab options as strings; when the combined options are re-parsed, clearing options can override nosuid, nodev, and noexec protections the administrator intended to enforce.
- CVE-2026-88833Medium
A flaw was found in BusyBox's udhcpc DHCP client. When processing raw DHCP packets, the client replaces the validated packet length with an attacker-controlled value from the IP header without re-validating the minimum size. This leads to an integer underflow when subtracting header sizes, causing a subsequent memory copy with a massively oversized length. An attacker on the same network segment can send a specially crafted packet to crash the DHCP client, resulting in denial of service and loss of network connectivity.
- CVE-2026-88836Unknown
This CVE candidate has been rejected by Red Hat Product Security because it is not a security vulnerability. BusyBox internal TLS is intentionally minimal and documents in FEATURE_WGET_HTTPS that it does not verify peer identity or provide full TLS security; missing Finished verify_data checking is consistent with that documented design and does not cross a separate security boundary warranting a CVE.
- CVE-2017-16544High
In the add_match function in libbb/lineedit.c in BusyBox through 1.27.2, the tab autocomplete feature does not sanitize filenames, potentially leading to executing any escape sequences in the terminal.
- CVE-2011-5325High
Directory traversal vulnerability in the BusyBox implementation of tar before version 1.22.0 v5 allows remote attackers to point to files outside the current working directory via a symlink.
- CVE-2016-2147High
Integer overflow in the DHCP client (udhcpc) in BusyBox before version 1.25.0 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (crash) via a malformed RFC1035-encoded domain name, leading to an out-of-bounds heap write.
- CVE-2016-6301High
The recv_and_process_client_pkt function in networking/ntpd.c in busybox allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a forged NTP packet, triggering a communication loop.
- CVE-2026-88841Low
The vulnerability in BusyBox affects the write_status_file() function in the dpkg tool. Failure to reset a stale field cursor between package stanzas leads to out-of-bounds reads and corruption of the status file when removing multiple packages.
- CVE-2022-48174Critical
A stack overflow vulnerability exists in ash.c:6030 in busybox before version 1.35. In the Internet of Vehicles environment, it can be exploited from command execution to arbitrary code execution.
- CVE-2026-108119Medium
A flaw was found in busybox. The tar applet's deferred link-creation handling for symlink and hardlink entries with unsafe-looking targets does not validate that the resolved destination remains inside the extraction directory once the deferred link is created. An attacker can craft a tar archive using a symlink target of exactly '..' combined with a deferred hardlink to create a new file outside the extraction directory, or reuse an extraction directory across two archives to replace an existing file outside it.
Original NVD description (English source)
A flaw was found in BusyBox. This vulnerability allows an attacker to modify files outside of the intended extraction directory by crafting a malicious tar archive containing unvalidated hardlink or symlink entries. If the tar archive is extracted with elevated privileges, this flaw can lead to privilege escalation, enabling an attacker to gain unauthorized access to critical system files.
Vulnerability data from NVD (NIST) · CISA KEV · EPSS

