pacman before 5.2 is vulnerable to arbitrary command injection in conf.c in the downloadwithxfercommand() function. This can be exploited when unsigned databases are used. To exploit the vulnerability, the user must enable a non-default XferCommand and retrieve an attacker-controlled crafted database and package.

pacman before 5.2 is vulnerable to arbitrary command injection in lib/libalpm/sync.c in the applydeltas() function. This can be exploited when unsigned databases are used. To exploit the vulnerability, the user must enable the non-default delta feature and retrieve an attacker-controlled crafted database and delta file.

pacman before 5.1.3 allows directory traversal when installing a remote package via a specified URL "pacman -U <url>" due to an unsanitized file name received from a Content-Disposition header. pacman renames the downloaded package file to match the name given in this header. However, pacman did not sanitize this name, which may contain slashes, before calling rename(). A malicious server (or a network MitM if downloading over HTTP) can send a Content-Disposition header to make pacman place the file anywhere in the filesystem, potentially leading to arbitrary root code execution. Notably, this bypasses pacman's package signature checking. This occurs in curldownloadinternal in lib/libalpm/dload.c.

libalpm, as used in pacman 5.0.1, allows remote attackers to cause a denial of service (infinite loop or out-of-bounds read) via a crafted signature file.