RUSTSEC-2026-0068: tar-rs incorrectly ignores PAX size headers if header size is nonzero

What to do

1. See which version you have: cargo tree -i tar (it also shows which of your dependencies pulls it in).
2. Update within your version requirement: cargo update -p tar. If the fix is a newer major or minor than your requirement allows, raise it in Cargo.toml (for example tar = "0.4.45") or update the dependency that pulls it in.
3. Check again with cargo audit, or paste your Cargo.lock into our Cargo.toml checker.

Details from the advisory

Versions 0.4.44 and below of tar-rs have conditional logic that skips the PAX size header in cases where the base header size is nonzero.

As part of CVE-2025-62518, the astral-tokio-tar project was changed to correctly honor PAX size headers in the case where it was different from the base header. This is almost the inverse of the astral-tokio-tar issue.

Any discrepancy in how tar parsers honor file size can be used to create archives that appear differently when unpacked by different archivers. In this case, the tar-rs (Rust tar) crate is an outlier in checking for the header size , other tar parsers (including e.g. Go archive/tar) unconditionally use the PAX size override. This can affect anything that uses the tar crate to parse archives and expects to have a consistent view with other parsers.

This issue has been fixed in version 0.4.45.

References

• Package: crates.io/crates/tar
• Advisory: rustsec.org/advisories/RUSTSEC-2026-0068.html

From the RustSec Advisory Database (CC0-1.0) via the OSV export, downloaded Oct 24, 2026. Severity score computed from the published CVSS vector.

Other advisories for tar

• Vulnerability HighRUSTSEC-2018-0002 · 2018-06-29Links in archives can overwrite any existing file
• Vulnerability HighRUSTSEC-2021-0080 · 2021-07-19Links in archive can create arbitrary directories
• VulnerabilityRUSTSEC-2026-0067 · 2026-03-19`unpack_in` can chmod arbitrary directories by following symlinks
• VulnerabilityGHSA-3pv8-6f4r-ffg2 · 2026-05-29tar has a PAX header desynchronization issue

Full security history of tar