CVE-2026-5223
Cargo incorrectly handled symlinks inside of crate tarballs downloaded from third-party registries, allowing a malicious crate to override the source code of another crate from the same registry.
Does this matter?
Lower severity and a low EPSS score (0.29%). Track it; it rarely justifies an emergency change on its own.
Description
Cargo incorrectly handled symlinks inside of crate tarballs downloaded from third-party registries, allowing a malicious crate to override the source code of another crate from the same registry. The severity of the vulnerability is **medium** for users of third-party registries. Users of crates.io are **not affected**, as crates.io forbids uploading crates containing any symlink.
- CVSS 4.0
- 6.5 MEDIUMCVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/M
- EPSS
- 0.29% probability · 22th percentile
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-61
- Affected
- rust-lang/cargo
- Source
- 986d4109-89ea-491f-99fd-a8e4803919bd
References
- https://blog.rust-lang.org/2026/05/25/cve-2026-5223/Mitigation, Vendor Advisory
- https://github.com/rust-lang/cargo/pull/17031Issue Tracking, Patch
- https://groups.google.com/g/rustlang-security-announcements/c/IB74S7Yksg8Mailing List, Third Party Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA. Refreshed daily.