---
id: CVE-2026-79655
title: 'A flaw was found in sos clean, a utility within the sos package'
summary: >-
  A flaw was found in sos clean, a utility within the sos package. This
  vulnerability allows a local attacker to perform arbitrary file creation or
  overwrite. By crafting a malicious tar archive, an attacker can exploit a path
  traversal is…
severity: high
cvss: 7.8
cvssVector: 'CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H'
cwe:
  - CWE-59
vendor: Red Hat
product: sos
affected:
  - sos (all versions)
  - sos
  - sos
  - sos (all versions)
  - sos (all versions)
published: '2026-08-25'
updated: '2026-10-06'
sourceUpdated: '2026-10-06T08:16:37.050'
source: NVD
sourceUrl: 'https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-79655'
references:
  - url: 'https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2026-79655'
    label: secalert@redhat.com
  - url: 'https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2523363'
    label: secalert@redhat.com
  - url: 'https://github.com/sosreport/sos/issues/4460'
    label: secalert@redhat.com
  - url: 'https://github.com/sosreport/sos/pull/4461'
    label: secalert@redhat.com
  - url: 'https://github.com/sosreport/sos/issues/4460'
    label: 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0
tags:
  - nvd
  - cve.org
  - exploit-available
epss: 0.00214
epssPercentile: 0.11678
exploitAvailable: true
ssvc:
  exploitation: poc
  automatable: 'no'
  technicalImpact: total
  timestamp: '2026-08-25T14:11:44.733488Z'
ingestedAt: '2026-10-06T07:49:23.046Z'
---

## Overview

A flaw was found in sos clean, a utility within the sos package. This vulnerability allows a local attacker to perform arbitrary file creation or overwrite. By crafting a malicious tar archive, an attacker can exploit a path traversal issue during tar extraction, where symlink and hardlink targets are not properly validated. This enables the attacker to write files to arbitrary locations on the system with the privileges of the sos clean process, which often runs as root.

## Remediation

Refer to the linked advisories for vendor-supplied fixes and affected version ranges.