Quick answers
- Is CVE-2026-69973 exploited in the wild?
- No. Junglewise Threat Intelligence has no report of CVE-2026-69973 being exploited in the wild.
- How severe is CVE-2026-69973?
- Medium severity, with a CVSS score of 6.5, published 13 October 2026.
- Which products and versions are affected?
- Libarchive Windows versions.
- Is there a fix for CVE-2026-69973?
- No fixed version is recorded yet. Check the vendor's advisory in the references below. If you run it, Junglewise drafts a mitigation that fits your setup and applies it once you approve, with senior security engineers behind it.
- How is CVE-2026-69973 attacked?
- It is attacked over the network, in a software library.
- Am I affected by CVE-2026-69973?
- Check whether you run Libarchive at an affected version. Junglewise does that check for you around the clock: connect your code, cloud and domains, and it matches new vulnerabilities like this one against what you actually run and tells you when one reaches you.
Technical details
The vulnerability is a path traversal flaw in Windows Libarchive's archive extraction functionality that fails to properly validate and restrict pathnames within archive entries. An attacker can craft a malicious archive containing entries with directory traversal sequences (e.g., "../../../") to write files to arbitrary locations on the filesystem when extracted. The attack requires user interaction to extract the archive but can occur over a network if the archive is obtained remotely.
Affected products
- Libarchive Libarchive Windows versions
Timeline
- 2026-10-13: disclosed