Technical impact
microtar 0.1.0 contains a stack‑based buffer overflow in raw_to_header(). The function uses strcpy() to copy up to 100‑byte ustar fields that may lack a null terminator, allowing up to 355 bytes to be written into a 100‑byte destination buffer during mtar_open(), mtar_find(), or mtar_read_header(). This overflow can corrupt adjacent stack memory, and based on the description it is inferred that an attacker might be able to execute arbitrary code or at least crash the application, but the CVE data does not explicitly confirm RCE. The weakness is categorized as CWE‑121.
Affected Systems
The affected product is microtar v0.1.0 from vendor rxi:microtar. No other versions or vendors are listed in the CNA data, so only this specific release is impacted.
Risk and Exploitability
The CVSS score of 8.7 indicates high severity, while the EPSS score is not available. The vulnerability is not listed in CISA’s KEV catalog. Based on the description, it is inferred that an attacker might supply a malicious TAR archive to any application that uses microtar; the vector could be local if the application accepts input from the local filesystem, or remote if a network interface allows delivery of the archive, but the exact attack vector is not explicitly defined in the CVE data. Successful exploitation would require stack manipulation and potentially a return‑to‑libc or ROP chain to achieve code execution, but this is not confirmed.
