Reference page — cumulative record through Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC. Reference pages update as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record.

CVE-2018-20482

CVE-2018-20482MEDIUM

n/a n/a — GNU Tar through 1.30, when --sparse is used, mishandles file shrinkage during read access, which allows local users to cause a denial of …

  AV  AC  PR  UI  S  C  I  A   CVSS    EPSS   %ile   KEV
   L   H   L   N  U  N  N  H    4.7   .0053   43.6     —

AFFECTED
  Product  Versions  Fixed
  n/a      n/a –     —

TIMELINE
  Dec 26  Reserved by mitre
  Dec 26  Published (CNA: mitre)
  Oct 14  ENRICHED — CVE-2018-20482. Received CVSS 4.7 and CPE data from NVD.
  Oct 14  EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2018-20482. Public exploit reference added.

CWE-835 · CNA: mitre · CVSS v3.1 · 11 references · NVD status: Modified

Description

GNU Tar through 1.30, when --sparse is used, mishandles file shrinkage during read access, which allows local users to cause a denial of service (infinite read loop in sparse_dump_region in sparse.c) by modifying a file that is supposed to be archived by a different user's process (e.g., a system backup running as root).

Lifecycle

Complete event history — 4 events, chronological
Date	Event	Detail
December 26, 2018	Reserved	Reserved by mitre
December 26, 2018	Published	Published (CNA: mitre)
October 14, 2026	ENRICHED	ENRICHED — CVE-2018-20482. Received CVSS 4.7 and CPE data from NVD.
October 14, 2026	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED	EXPLOIT PUBLISHED — CVE-2018-20482. Public exploit reference added.

Affected

Affected products and packages — 1 row
Vendor	Product / Package	Ecosystem	Version introduced	Fixed
n/a	n/a	—	n/a	—

Weaknesses

CWE-835

References (11)

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/tar.git/commit/?id=c15c42ccd1e2377945fd0414eca1a49294bff454 [Patch, Third Party Advisory]
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-tar/2018-12/msg00023.html [Third Party Advisory]
http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-security-announce/2019-04/msg00077.html [Mailing List, Third Party Advisory]
http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/106354 [Third Party Advisory, VDB Entry]
https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/html/ssa-398330.html
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/12/msg00023.html [Mailing List, Third Party Advisory]
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2021/11/msg00025.html [Mailing List, Third Party Advisory]
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18745431 [Exploit, Third Party Advisory]
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201903-05 [Third Party Advisory]
https://twitter.com/thatcks/status/1076166645708668928 [Patch, Third Party Advisory]
https://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/sysadmin/TarFindingTruncateBug [Patch, Third Party Advisory]

Authoritative record: CVE-2018-20482 at cve.org

Weaknesses: CWE-835

About this page

This is a reference page, not a dated page of record. It assembles the complete lifecycle of CVE-2018-20482 from the CVE Program record, NVD enrichment, the CISA KEV catalog, EPSS, and OSV advisories. The box score's numbers (CVSS, EPSS, KEV status) are current as of Monday, October 19, 2026 UTC and are re-derived as the archive grows; only dated daily editions are immutable pages of record. The authoritative source for this identifier is cve.org.