GHSA-3pv8-6f4r-ffg2

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:

% tar tvf tests/archives/pax-overrides-extension-header.tar 
----------  0 0      0        2048 Dec 31  1969 longname.txt
----------  0 0      0           0 Dec 31  1969 file_b

with tar-rs:

---- pax_size_does_not_apply_to_extension_headers stdout ----

thread 'pax_size_does_not_apply_to_extension_headers' (250476889) panicked at tests/all.rs:2121:27:
called `Result::unwrap()` on an `Err` value: Custom { kind: Other, error: "numeric field was not a number: AAAAAAAA when getting cksum for AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA" }
note: run with `RUST_BACKTRACE=1` environment variable to display a backtrace

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.