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CVE-2026-5223

Crates in third party registries can override the cached source of other crates

Medium6.5EPSS 0.29%
Published
Updated
Reserved
Assigned by
rust

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.

Scores

CVSS scores of CVE-2026-5223, by who scored it
Scored byCVSSScoreVector
rustCNA (assigner)4.0Medium6.5CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H
NVDNVD · Analyzed4.0Medium6.5CVSS: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/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
EPSS (exploitation in 30 days)
0.29% · top 78% of all CVEs (6 Nov 2026)
CISA SSVC
Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
Loading the EPSS history…

The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 6.5.

Weakness

Affected products

Affected packages

From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.

What to do

Solution: Rust 1.96.0, to be released on May 28th, 2026, will update Cargo to reject extracting *any* symlink within crate tarballs, regardless of whether they come from crates.io (which already forbids them) or third-party registries. Note that Cargo never added symlinks when running `cargo package` or `cargo publish`, so the impact of this should be minimal.

Workaround: Users who are not able to upgrade to the most recent Rust version are recommended to audit the contents of their registry for the presence of any symlink, and to configure their registry to reject symlink (if such option is available).

References (3)

Sources

The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.

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Record last updated .