GHSA-6gx3-4362-rf54 is a medium-severity (CVSS 5.3) CWE-436 vulnerability in astral-tokio-tar. A fix is available for astral-tokio-tar — see the affected versions and patch details below.
astral-tokio-tar insufficiently validates PAX extensions during extraction
Exploitation Status
No confirmed exploitation observed yet
- CISA’s own triage has not observed active exploitation or public proof-of-concept code for this CVE as of its last assessment.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA’s SSVC triage for GHSA-6gx3-4362-rf54.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) is a daily probability model maintained by FIRST.org. It estimates the likelihood a CVE will be exploited in production environments within the next 30 days, derived from real-world threat intelligence signals.
How urgent is this, really
GHSA-6gx3-4362-rf54 plotted by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). The shaded corner — EPSS 50%+ and CVSS 7.0+ — is where this CVE doesn't sit, though severity or exploitability alone can still warrant action.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 377,636 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Real counts from FIRST.org, not a sample — log-scaled since the landscape is heavily right-skewed.
Real-World Exposure
astral-tokio-tarReal-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects crates.io packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.
Description
Impact
In versions 0.5.6 and earlier of astral-tokio-tar, malformed PAX extensions were silently skipped when parsing tar archives. This silent skipping (rather than rejection) of invalid PAX extensions could be used as a building block for a parser differential, for example by having astral-tokio-tar silently skip a malformed GNU “long link” extension so that a subsequent parser would misinterpret the extension.
In practice, exploiting this behavior in astral-tokio-tar requires a secondary misbehaving tar parser, i.e. one that insufficiently validates malformed PAX extensions and interprets them rather than skipping or erroring on them. Consequently this advisory is considered low-severity within astral-tokio-tar itself, as it requires a separate vulnerability against any unrelated tar parser.
Patches
Versions 0.6.0 and newer of astral-tokio-tar reject invalid PAX extensions, rather than silently skipping them.
Workarounds
Users are advised to upgrade to version 0.6.0 or newer to address this advisory.
Most users should experience no breaking changes as a result of the patch above. Some users who attempt to extract poorly constructed tar files may experience errors; users should re-construct their tar files with a conforming tar parser.
Attribution
- Sergei Zimmerman (@xokdvium)
Affected Packages
| Ecosystem | Package | Vulnerable range | Fix |
|---|---|---|---|
| 🦀crates.io | astral-tokio-tar | all versions | 0.6.0cargo update -p astral-tokio-tar --precise 0.6.0 |
Detection & mitigation playbook
Open-source dependencyDetect
Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for astral-tokio-tar, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.
Fix
Update astral-tokio-tar to 0.6.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms GHSA-6gx3-4362-rf54 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.
How O3 protects you
O3 Security's impact-aware SCA analyses which vulnerable code paths your application actually calls, so a match like GHSA-6gx3-4362-rf54 can be triaged on real exposure rather than presence alone.
Tailored to GHSA-6gx3-4362-rf54. Runtime protection reduces exposure until a permanent patch is applied and verified — it complements patching, it doesn't replace it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is GHSA-6gx3-4362-rf54 in your dependencies?
O3 Security finds GHSA-6gx3-4362-rf54 across crates.io dependencies, including transitive ones, and its impact-aware SCA ranks findings by whether your code actually calls the vulnerable path.