Junglewise Threat Intelligence

CVE-2026-4424: libarchive heap out-of-bounds read in RAR processing

CVE-2026-4424 · Severity: high · CVSS 7.5 · Published 2026-03-19

Technologies: Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform, Libarchive, Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Vendors: Red Hat, Libarchive.

Executive brief

A security vulnerability has been identified in libarchive, a widely used software library for reading and writing various archive formats like ZIP and RAR. This flaw allows an attacker to create a malicious RAR file that, when processed by the library, can expose sensitive information from the computer's memory. This could lead to the theft of data or help an attacker bypass other security measures, and it does not require any special user permissions or interaction to exploit.

Technical details

A heap out-of-bounds read vulnerability exists in libarchive's RAR archive processing logic. The root cause is improper validation of the LZSS sliding window size when the decompressor transitions between different compression methods. A remote, unauthenticated attacker can exploit this by providing a specially crafted RAR archive. Successful exploitation allows the attacker to read sensitive information from heap memory, which could potentially be used to facilitate further attacks or leak sensitive data. The vulnerability is tracked as CWE-125. Patches have been released by various vendors, including Red Hat, and a pull request is available in the upstream libarchive repository.

Affected products

  • libarchive libarchive All versions prior to fix
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0, 7.0, 8.0, 9.0, 10.0
  • Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.16

Timeline

  • 2026-03-19: disclosed: Initial publication date
  • 2026-04-23: patched: Red Hat released security updates (RHSA-2026:10065)

References