CVE-2026-53655
MediumCVSS 5.5Exploitation Probability (EPSS)
Low risk1th percentile — higher than 1% of all known CVEs
Summary
Vulnerability in node-tar (before 7.5.16) involves incorrect processing of PAX extended headers. The library erroneously applies the size override from a PAX header to intermediate metadata headers (e.g., GNU long-name), causing stream desynchronization compared to other tar implementations. This allows crafting an archive that is interpreted differently by different tools.
Risk Assessment
An attacker can hide a malicious file from a security scanner using one library while the extractor uses another. This leads to bypassing malware or secret detection in tar archives.
Recommendation
Immediately update node-tar to version 7.5.16 or later. If update is not possible, avoid using node-tar to process archives from untrusted sources.
Original NVD description (English source)
node-tar is a full-featured Tar for Node.js. Prior to 7.5.16, tar (node-tar) applies a PAX extended header's size= record (and other PAX overrides) to the next header entry of any type, including intermediary metadata headers such as a GNU long-name (L) or long-link (K) entry. Per POSIX pax, a PAX extended header (x) describes the next file entry, not the intermediary extension headers that may sit between the x header and the file it annotates. Because node-tar lets the PAX size override the byte length of an intervening L/K/x header, an attacker can desynchronize node-tar's stream cursor relative to every other mainstream tar implementation (GNU tar, libarchive/bsdtar, Python tarfile, and the now-fixed tar-rs / astral-tokio-tar). The result is a tar parser interpretation differential (CWE-436): a single crafted archive yields a different set of members under node-tar than under the reference tar tools. An attacker can use this to hide a member from one parser while it is visible to another, which defeats security tooling whose scanner and extractor disagree on archive contents (e.g. a malware/secret scanner that lists entries with one library while a downstream step extracts with another) This vulnerability is fixed in 7.5.16.