Is this vulnerability remotely exploitable?

It can be, depending on how node-tar is used. If an application accepts tar archives from network clients or external sources and extracts them using a vulnerable node-tar version on a susceptible filesystem, an attacker can remotely supply a crafted archive to attempt exploitation.

What level of access does an attacker need to exploit this issue?

The attacker needs the ability to influence the contents of a tarball processed by node-tar—such as uploading an archive to a web service, contributing a package or artifact, or otherwise controlling the input to a process that calls node-tar's extraction APIs. No direct shell or local account on the target system is required if the archive interface itself is exposed.

What is the safest general fix pattern for affected code?

The most robust fix pattern is to ensure that all paths are normalized and canonicalized using a scheme that mirrors the target filesystem's behavior before they are used for locking, comparison, or routing decisions, and to treat symbolic links as untrusted. This includes: - Normalizing and case-folding paths consistently before deriving lock keys. - Serializing operations on all filesystem-equivalent paths. - Restricting or eliminating symlink processing for untrusted archives.

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(8.8)

Race Condition & Unicode Normalization Path Collision (CWE-367/CWE-176) in node-tar PathReservations

CVE-2026-23950

Published:

Jan 19, 2026

Status:

Analyzed

Summary

Affected Context

Exploit Preconditions

Why This Happens

Potential Impact

General Mitigation Guidance

How Teams Detect Issues Like This

Frequently Asked Questions

Source

NDV

Recent Vulnerabilities

CWE-77;CWE-78

HIGH RISK

HIGH

(7.3)

OS Command Injection (CWE-78) in Totolink A7100RU setGameSpeedCfg CGI Handler

Remote Code Execution on the Router

April 6, 2026

CWE-77;CWE-78

HIGH RISK

HIGH

(7.3)

OS Command Injection (CWE-78) in Totolink A7100RU setFirewallType Handler

Remote Code Execution on Router Firmware

April 6, 2026

Vulnerability Type

Category:

Race Condition and Filesystem Path Handling

CWE:

CWE-176;CWE-352;CWE-367

Impact:

Arbitrary File Overwrite via Symlink Poisoning

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(8.8)

CVSS Version:

3.1

Vulnerability Type

Category:

Race Condition and Filesystem Path Handling

CWE:

CWE-176;CWE-352;CWE-367

Impact:

Arbitrary File Overwrite via Symlink Poisoning

Severity:

HIGH RISK

(8.8)

CVSS Version:

3.1

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Race Condition & Unicode Normalization Path Collision (CWE-367/CWE-176) in node-tar PathReservations

Summary

Affected Context

Exploit Preconditions

Why This Happens

Potential Impact

General Mitigation Guidance

How Teams Detect Issues Like This

Frequently Asked Questions

Source

Recent Vulnerabilities

HIGH RISK

HIGH

(7.3)

OS Command Injection (CWE-78) in Totolink A7100RU setGameSpeedCfg CGI Handler

HIGH RISK

HIGH

(7.3)

OS Command Injection (CWE-78) in Totolink A7100RU setFirewallType Handler

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Vulnerability Type

Catch This CVE While Code Is Being Written

Ship clean & secure code faster

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