CVE-2021-32610 is a high-severity (CVSS 7.1) CWE-59 vulnerability in pear/archive_tar. EPSS puts its 30-day exploitation probability at 73.4% (99th percentile). A fix is available for pear/archive_tar — see the affected versions and patch details below.
Directory Traversal in Archive_Tar
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2021-32610 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). In the shaded patch-first corner (EPSS 50%+, CVSS 7.0+).
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the 50–90% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Real-World Exposure
pear/archive_tarReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects Packagist packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
In Archive_Tar before 1.4.14, symlinks can refer to targets outside of the extracted archive, a different vulnerability than CVE-2020-36193.
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🐘Packagist | pear/archive_tar | all versions | 1.4.14composer require pear/archive_tar:^1.4.14 |
Affected Products
debian linuxdebianfedorafedoraprojectarchive tarphpDetection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for pear/archive_tar, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update pear/archive_tar to 1.4.14 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-32610 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.
Workarounds
If you can't upgrade right away: gate or disable the affected feature, validate untrusted input at the boundary, and avoid passing attacker-controlled data into the vulnerable path. O3's runtime protection blocks exploitation in production as an interim safeguard until the upgrade lands.
Fixing This On Your OS
If you run this on a Linux distribution, patch through your package manager against the distro's own security advisory below — it tracks the exact backported fix for your release, which can ship on a different timeline (and sometimes a different severity) than the upstream project.
| Product | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | php:7.4-8070020220707122009.afd00e68 | RHSA-2022:7628 |
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2021-32610 in your dependencies?
Find it across Packagist, including transitive dependencies.