CVE-2005-1918: GNU Tar

Low severity, CVSS 2.6. EPSS: 2.9% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The original patch for a GNU tar directory traversal vulnerability (CVE-2002-0399) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 2.1 uses an "incorrect optimization" that allows user-assisted attackers to overwrite arbitrary files via a crafted tar file, probably involving "/../" sequences with a leading "/".

Affected products

• GNU Tar: version 1.13.25 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux: version 2.1 only; version 3.0 only
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop: version 3.0 only
• Red Hat Linux Advanced Workstation: version 2.1 only

Published 2005-12-31. Last modified 2026-06-16.