CVE-2026-55569aqua: Archive extraction in aqua follows attacker-planted symlinks, allowing writes outside the install directory

aqua is a declarative command-line version manager written in Go. Prior to 2.60.1, pkg/unarchive/archives.go in the handler.HandleFile method calls os.Symlink with archives.FileInfo.LinkTarget without verifying that the target remains under the extraction destination. A later regular-file entry at the same archive path is opened with OpenFile using O_CREATE and O_WRONLY, which follows the attacker-planted symlink. A malicious or compromised package archive can therefore write attacker-controlled bytes outside aqua's extraction directory with the privileges of the user running aqua, potentially overwriting shell startup files, tool configuration, or writable executable paths. This issue is fixed in version 2.60.1.

CVSS

6.6 MEDIUM (v3.1, CNA)CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:L

Weakness (CWE)

CWE-22, CWE-59

Known exploited

Not in CISA's KEV catalog

EPSS (exploitation in the next 30 days)

Not loaded for this CVE

Assigned by

GitHub_M

NVD analysis

Deferred

Record last updated

Sep 1, 2026

First seen by InfoSec Signals

Oct 9, 2026

The CVE record on cve.org · NVD's entry

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