CVE-2026-73566: isaacs node-tar Uncontrolled Resource Consumption

Vulnerability summary

CVE-2026-73566 is a high (CVSS 7.5) Uncontrolled Resource Consumption vulnerability in isaacs node-tar. EPSS estimates a 0.53% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 43.7% of scored vulnerabilities.

Timeline

1. 13-08-2026
   PublishedVulnerability first disclosed.
2. 21-08-2026
   Last modifiedVulnerability information updated.

Description

node-tar is a tar archive manipulation library for Node.js. Prior to 7.5.21, node-tar's filesFilter in src/list.ts uses the recursive mapHas helper to walk an archive entry path upward with path.dirname() and no segment cap when tar.t(...) or tar.x(...) receives a non-empty member-selection list. A crafted GNU L or PAX x long-path header with thousands of slash-separated segments reaches this.filter(entry.path, entry) in Parser[CONSUMEHEADER] in src/parse.ts before Unpack[CHECKPATH] applies maxDepth, causing an uncatchable RangeError stack overflow that terminates asynchronous and streaming Node.js consumers. This issue is fixed in version 7.5.21.

• CWE-400Uncontrolled Resource ConsumptionThe product does not properly control the allocation and maintenance of a limited resource.
• CWE-674Uncontrolled RecursionThe product does not properly control the amount of recursion that takes place, consuming excessive resources, such as allocated memory or the program stack.