CVE-2026-5223Crates in third party registries can override the cached source of other crates
- 6.5MediumCVSS base score
- 0.29%Exploitation in 30 daysEPSS · top 78% of all CVEs
- NoKnown exploitednot in CISA's KEV catalog
- NonePublic exploitsnone known yet
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.
Timeline
ID reserved
By rust
- 55 days later
· 55 days later
Published
- 2 days later
· 2 days later
Record updated
Changes after publication (a new score, a public exploit, EPSS crossing 1, 10 or 50 %, leaving KEV) are kept since November 2026; earlier ones are not known.
Scores
| Scored by | CVSS | Score | Vector |
|---|---|---|---|
| rustCNA (assigner) | 4.0 | Medium6.5 | 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 |
| NVDNVD · Analyzed | 4.0 | Medium6.5 | 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/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 (14 Nov 2026)
- CISA SSVC
- Exploitation: none · Automatable: no · Technical impact: partial
The list uses the assigner's score when there is one, then CISA's, then NVD's: Medium 6.5.
Affected products
- affected 1.0.0 – < 1.96.0
Affected packages
From reviewed advisories of the GitHub Advisory Database.
- crates.iocargoGHSA-jq42-7mfv-hm57 (opens in a new tab)
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
Sources
The same CVE in the primary databases and aggregators, to check against.
- CVE.org record (opens in a new tab)
- CVE List JSON (GitHub) (opens in a new tab)
- NVD (opens in a new tab)
- FIRST EPSS (opens in a new tab)
- EUVD EUVD-2026-31658 (opens in a new tab)
- OSV.dev (opens in a new tab)
- GitHub Advisory GHSA-jq42-7mfv-hm57 (opens in a new tab)
- CIRCL Vulnerability-Lookup (opens in a new tab)
Badge for a README or a ticket
[](https://cveledger.app/cve/CVE-2026-5223)Record last updated .