Vulnerability in Rust-Lang Cargo
CVE-2026-5223
Cargo incorrectly handled symlinks inside of crate tarballs downloaded from third-party registries, allowing a malicious crate to override the source code of another crate from the same registry. The severity of the vulnerability is **medium** for users of third-party registries. Users of crates.io are **not affected**, as crates.io forbids uploading crates containing any symlink.
Published · last modified .
CVSS v3 metric
CVSS v3 base score 5.3 (Medium). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:L/A:N.
EPSS exploit prediction
EPSS: 0.003 (20.7th percentile), scored .
Very low probability of exploitation in the next 30 days; routine patching cadence is appropriate. 21st percentile — 20.7% of CVEs in the catalogue have a lower EPSS than this one. How to read EPSS.
EPSS over last 30 days · oldest: 0.003 · newest: 0.003 · change: 0.000
Affected products
- Rust-Lang Cargo
- Rust Project Cargo — versions 1.0.0
Weakness classification (CWE)
References
- 986d4109-89ea-491f-99fd-a8e4803919bd (mailing-list, vendor-advisory, Mailing List, Third Party Advisory)
- 986d4109-89ea-491f-99fd-a8e4803919bd (vendor-advisory, Mitigation, Vendor Advisory)
- 986d4109-89ea-491f-99fd-a8e4803919bd (Patch, patch, Issue Tracking)
Frequently asked questions
- What is CVE-2026-5223?
- CVE-2026-5223 is a medium-severity vulnerability in Rust-Lang Cargo, classified under UNIX Symbolic Link (Symlink) Following. CVSS score: 5.3/10. Published 2026-05-25.
- How severe is CVE-2026-5223?
- Medium severity. CVSS v3 base score is 5.3 out of 10.