Executive brief
A vulnerability in the ORAS Java SDK, a tool used to interact with OCI registries and manage cloud artifacts, allows an attacker to write malicious files to arbitrary locations on a user's system. By providing a specially crafted archive (tar or zip) containing malicious symbolic links, an attacker can bypass security checks and overwrite critical system files or configuration data. This could lead to a complete system takeover, service outages, or the theft of credentials when the SDK is used to pull and extract artifacts.
Technical details
A path traversal vulnerability exists in the `ArchiveUtils.untar` and `ArchiveUtils.unzip` methods of `land.oras:oras-java-sdk` due to insufficient validation of symbolic link targets. While the library checks the entry name, it fails to validate the `linkName` of symlink entries. An attacker can provide a malicious OCI layer containing a symlink pointing outside the extraction directory, followed by a regular file that traverses this symlink. Because `Files.newOutputStream` is called without `LinkOption.NOFOLLOW_LINKS`, the subsequent write follows the symlink and overwrites files on the host system. This is reachable via the public `Registry.pullArtifact` and `OCILayout.pullArtifact` APIs when the `io.deis.oras.content.unpack=true` manifest layer is present. The vulnerability is addressed in version 0.6.4.
Affected products
- ORAS Project oras-java-sdk <= 0.6.3
Timeline
- 2026-05-27: advisory: Initial advisory published
- 2026-07-01: other: Advisory updated