Описание
tar has a PAX header desynchronization issue
Summary
When a tar stream contains multiple "header" entries prior to a file entry, tar-rs applies the PAX header (x) to the next entry in the stream, regardless of type. For example, a stream of x -> L -> file (PAX, GNU longname, file) would result in x's extensions being applied to L rather than to file.
Per POSIX pax, this is incorrect: a PAX header always applies to a file entry, not any intermediary entries. See the "pax Header Block" section for the specific prescription there.
As a result of this, an attacker can contrive a tar containing a sequence of tar headers such that tar-rs applies the PAX header's size extension to the next header in sequence, effectively desynchronizing the stream and enabling tar-rs specific skippage/extraction of members. In other words, a file can be contrived to extract differently on tar-rs than on other tar parsers.
PoC
This tar (zipped for size) demonstrates the desynchronization: with tar tvf:
with tar-rs:
In the above case, the PoC is not weaponized, so it jumps into the middle of an entry and subsequently fails the checksum test rather than silently continuing with attacker-controlled archive state.
Impact
This is very similar to GHSA-j5gw-2vrg-8fgx and GHSA-fp55-jw48-c537 in impact -- an attacker can use this to extract (or not extract) files from a tar stream depending on the tar parser used, which in turn can be used to obscure the presence of malicious files.
Пакеты
tar
<= 0.4.45
0.4.46