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.

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Advisories

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Fixes

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).

History

Mon, 25 May 2026 09:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
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.
Title Crates in third party registries can override the cached source of other crates
Weaknesses CWE-61
References
Metrics cvssV4_0

{'score': 6.5, 'vector': 'CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:P/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:H/SI:H/SA:H'}


Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: rust

Published:

Updated: 2026-05-25T08:57:08.488Z

Reserved: 2026-03-31T12:07:41.420Z

Link: CVE-2026-5223

cve-icon Vulnrichment

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cve-icon NVD

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cve-icon Redhat

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cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

Updated: 2026-05-25T10:30:22Z

Weaknesses