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Date: Sat, 29 Apr 2000 17:00:30 -0700 (PDT)
From: Paul Eggert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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Subject: Re: tar deletes symlink on extract
References: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Thu, 27 Apr 2000 12:34:55 -0500 (CDT)
From: Adam Heath <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
It changed the symlink to a dir, and broke my system.
Granted, this is easy to fix, but this is very bad.
tar's behavior is needed to avoid a security bug where an intruder
plants a symbolic link to a victim file just before root (or some
other user) uses tar to extract a file with the same name as the
victim file. tar can't tell the difference between your
/usr->mount/usr symlink and an intruder's symlink.
Sorry about the behavior change, but I couldn't see any other way to
plug the security hole. The security hole is apparently a real
problem in practice: I've gotten multiple bug reports about it, and am
still getting reports about older versions.
To work around the problem, use the --overwrite option of tar 1.13.16
or later; this restores the old, insecure behavior. For more details,
please see tar's NEWS file.
