Vulnerability · Published Aug 28, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M
CVE-2026-55569aqua: Archive extraction in aqua follows attacker-planted symlinks, allowing writes outside the install directory
Medium 6.6
In plain English
A medium-severity path traversal in aqua from aquaproj. Proof-of-concept exploit code is public. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.2% (higher than 8% of all known vulnerabilities). Fixed versions are available - upgrade the affected package.
Official description
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.
Affected packages & fixed versions
| Ecosystem | Package | Fixed in | Advisory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go | github.com/aquaproj/aqua | no fix listed | GO-2026-6314 |
| Go | github.com/aquaproj/aqua/v2 | 2.60.1 | GHSA-mf5c-hw34-4hpp |
| Go | github.com/aquaproj/aqua/v2 | 2.60.1 | GO-2026-6314 |
Affected products (as reported)
Weakness: CWE-22, CWE-59 · Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:H/A:L
References
- https://github.com/aquaproj/aqua/security/advisories/GHSA-mf5c-hw34-4hpp x_refsource_CONFIRM
- https://github.com/aquaproj/aqua/commit/d5b02b220188de376a661b3aabfa912202a1a59a x_refsource_MISC
- https://github.com/aquaproj/aqua/releases/tag/v2.60.1 x_refsource_MISC