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CVE-2026-9538 CPAN Security Group
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CVE ID: CVE-2026-9538
Distribution: Archive-Tar
Versions: before 3.10
MetaCPAN: https://metacpan.org/dist/Archive-Tar
VCS Repo: https://github.com/jib/archive-tar-new
Archive::Tar versions before 3.10 for Perl allow memory exhaustion via
attacker controlled entry size field in tar header
Description
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Archive::Tar versions before 3.10 for Perl allow memory exhaustion via
attacker controlled entry size field in tar header.
_read_tar() reads each entry's payload with $handle->read($$data,
$block), where $block is derived from the entry's 12-byte size field in
the tar header with no upper bound on that value.
A crafted header declaring a multi-gigabyte size causes Perl to
allocate a scalar of that size.
Problem types
-------------
- CWE-789 Memory Allocation with Excessive Size Value
Solutions
---------
Upgrade to Archive::Tar 3.10 or later.
References
----------
https://github.com/jib/archive-tar-new/commit/f9af01426038e29d9578825a0cd3626946ab08c7.patch
https://metacpan.org/release/BINGOS/Archive-Tar-3.10/changes
Timeline
--------
- 2026-05-25: Issue reported.
- 2026-05-25: Version 3.10 released.
