---
id: CVE-2026-79655
title: >-
  Sos: sos: path traversal in sos clean tar extraction via unvalidated
  symlink/hardlink targets leads to arbitrary file write
summary: >-
  A flaw was found in sos clean, a utility within the sos package. This
  vulnerability allows a local attacker to perform arbitrary file creation or
  overwrite. By crafting a malicious tar archive, an attacker can exploit a path
  traversal is…
severity: high
cvss: 7.8
cvssVector: 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H'
cvssSource: cna
cwe:
  - CWE-59
vendor: Red Hat
product: sos
affected:
  - sos (all versions)
  - sos
  - sos
  - sos (all versions)
  - sos (all versions)
ssvc:
  exploitation: poc
  automatable: 'no'
  technicalImpact: total
  timestamp: '2026-08-25T14:11:44.733488Z'
exploitAvailable: true
published: '2026-08-25'
updated: '2026-10-06'
sourceUpdated: '2026-10-06T07:33:16.935Z'
source: CVEORG
sourceUrl: 'https://www.cve.org/CVERecord?id=CVE-2026-79655'
references:
  - url: 'https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-79655'
  - url: 'https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2523363'
    label: RHBZ#2523363
  - url: 'https://github.com/sosreport/sos/issues/4460'
  - url: 'https://github.com/sosreport/sos/pull/4461'
tags:
  - cve.org
  - exploit-available
epss: 0.00186
epssPercentile: 0.07474
ingestedAt: '2026-10-06T07:49:23.046Z'
---

## Overview

A flaw was found in sos clean, a utility within the sos package. This vulnerability allows a local attacker to perform arbitrary file creation or overwrite. By crafting a malicious tar archive, an attacker can exploit a path traversal issue during tar extraction, where symlink and hardlink targets are not properly validated. This enables the attacker to write files to arbitrary locations on the system with the privileges of the sos clean process, which often runs as root.

## Affected

- `sos (all versions)`
- `sos`
- `sos`
- `sos (all versions)`
- `sos (all versions)`

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.

### Workarounds

To mitigate this issue, avoid using the `sos clean` utility to extract tar archives from untrusted or unknown sources. This vulnerability requires user interaction to process a specially crafted archive.