CVE-2026-4111
HighCVSS 7.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk49th percentile - higher than 49% of all known CVEs
Summary
A flaw was found in the RAR5 archive decompression logic of the libarchive library, where processing a specially crafted archive causes an infinite loop that continuously consumes CPU resources. The archive passes checksum validation and appears structurally valid, so affected applications cannot detect the issue before processing.
Risk Assessment
Attackers can exploit this vulnerability to cause a persistent denial-of-service condition in services that automatically process archives, leading to CPU exhaustion and potential system unavailability.
Recommendation
Update libarchive to the latest patched version immediately to fix the infinite loop in RAR5 decompression. Until the update is applied, implement timeouts and resource limits for archive processing tasks.
Other vulnerabilities in libarchive
See all- CVE-2017-13816High
An issue was discovered in certain Apple products, including macOS before 10.13.1, related to the 'libarchive' component. It allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service via a crafted archive file.
- CVE-2017-13813High
An issue was discovered in certain Apple products, including macOS before 10.13.1, involving the 'libarchive' component. It allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service via a crafted archive file.
- CVE-2017-13812High
An issue was discovered in certain Apple products, including macOS before 10.13.1, involving the 'libarchive' component. It allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service via a crafted archive file.
- CVE-2017-14502High
The libarchive library version 3.3.2 has an off-by-one error in the read_header function affecting UTF-16 names in RAR archives. This can lead to an out-of-bounds read in the archive_read_format_rar_read_header function.
- CVE-2017-7068High
An issue was discovered in certain Apple products related to the 'libarchive' component. It affects iOS before 10.3.3, macOS before 10.12.6, tvOS before 10.2.2, and watchOS before 3.2.3, allowing remote attackers to execute arbitrary code or cause a denial of service.
- CVE-2016-8689High
The read_Header function in archive_read_support_format_7zip.c in libarchive 3.2.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (out-of-bounds read) via multiple EmptyStream attributes in a header in a 7zip archive.
- CVE-2016-8687High
A stack-based buffer overflow in the safe_fprintf function in tar/util.c in libarchive 3.2.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service via a crafted non-printable multibyte character in a filename.
- CVE-2017-5601High
An error in the lha_read_file_header_1() function in libarchive 3.2.2 allows remote attackers to trigger an out-of-bounds read memory access, potentially causing a crash via a specially crafted archive.
- CVE-2016-4736High
libarchive in Apple OS X before 10.12 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (memory corruption) or possibly have unspecified other impact via a crafted file.
- CVE-2016-6250High
Integer overflow in the ISO9660 writer in libarchive before 3.2.1 allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (application crash) or execute arbitrary code via vectors related to verifying filename lengths when writing an ISO9660 archive, which trigger a buffer overflow.
Original NVD description (English source)
A flaw was identified in the RAR5 archive decompression logic of the libarchive library, specifically within the archive_read_data() processing path. When a specially crafted RAR5 archive is processed, the decompression routine may enter a state where internal logic prevents forward progress. This condition results in an infinite loop that continuously consumes CPU resources. Because the archive passes checksum validation and appears structurally valid, affected applications cannot detect the issue before processing. This can allow attackers to cause persistent denial-of-service conditions in services that automatically process archives.

