6.5

CVE-2026-5223: rust project cargo UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following

CVSS: 6.5v4.0MediumAnalyzed
AliasesALPINE-CVE-2026-5223UBUNTU-CVE-2026-5223DEBIAN-CVE-2026-5223
Published 25-05-2026Last modified 27-05-2026
Open JSON

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-5223 is a medium (CVSS 6.5) UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following vulnerability in rust project cargo. EPSS estimates a 0.29% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 20.7% of scored vulnerabilities.

Overall risk
26/100
0100
Medium · default modelHow is this calculated?
CVSS score
6.5/10
010
Medium · v4.0 (CVE.org)
EPSS score
0.29%
0%100%
Low · 0.00 pp in 30 days
KEVNot listedIn no KEV catalog
RansomwareNone recordedNo known use recorded
Public exploits0No public exploits recorded

Advisory lineage

Upstream 0 · Downstream 1
RHSA-2026:42923

Timeline

  1. 25-05-2026
    PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
  2. 27-05-2026
    Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

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.

CVSS metrics

8 scores · 6 sources · 2 versions

EPSS trend

Probability

0.29%

Chance of exploitation in the next 30 days

Percentile

21%

Versus all other CVEs

30-day change

0.00 pp

From 0.29% on 19-09-2026

19-09-202619-10-2026
EPSS score
0.29%

Known exploited

Compare KEV catalogs

Not in any of the 3 tracked catalogs.

Public exploits

0 found

No public exploits indexed.

Weaknesses

CWE · root cause

Affected systems

Ubuntu19 products
  • cargoAll versions (No fix recorded)
  • rustcAll versions (No fix recorded)
  • rustc-1.62All versions (No fix recorded)
  • rustc-1.74All versions (No fix recorded)
  • rustc-1.76All versions (No fix recorded)
Debian3 products
  • cargoAll versions (No fix recorded)
  • rust-cargoAll versions (No fix recorded) | < 0.91.0-3
  • rustcAll versions (No fix recorded) | < 1.85.1+dfsg1-1+deb13u1 | < 1.95.0+dfsg1-2
Alpine1 product
  • rust< 1.91.1-r2 | < 1.96.0-r0
Crates.Io1 product
  • cargo< 0.97.0
Rust project1 product
Rust-lang1 product

6 vendors · 26 products

References

11 links
Show all 11 references