The bzexe command in bzip2 1.0.5 and earlier generates compressed executables that do not properly handle temporary files during extraction, which allows local users to execute arbitrary code by precreating a temporary directory.

bzip2 before 1.0.2 in FreeBSD 4.5 and earlier, OpenLinux 3.1 and 3.1.1, and possibly systems, uses the permissions of symbolic links instead of the actual files when creating an archive, which could cause the files to be extracted with less restrictive permissions than intended.

bzip2 before 1.0.2 in FreeBSD 4.5 and earlier, OpenLinux 3.1 and 3.1.1, and possibly other operating systems, does not use the OEXCL flag to create files during decompression and does not warn the user if an existing file would be overwritten, which could allow attackers to overwrite files via a bzip2 archive.

Race condition in bzip2 before 1.0.2 in FreeBSD 4.5 and earlier, OpenLinux 3.1 and 3.1.1, and possibly other operating systems, decompresses files with world-readable permissions before setting the permissions to what is specified in the bzip2 archive, which could allow local users to read the files as they are being decompressed.

Race condition in bzip2 1.0.2 and earlier allows local users to modify permissions of arbitrary files via a hard link attack on a file while it is being decompressed, whose permissions are changed by bzip2 after the decompression is complete.