The following advisories have been posted to both https://blog.rust-lang.org/ and https://groups.google.com/g/rustlang-security-announcements/ earlier this week: CVE-2026-5222: Cargo can be coerced to share credentials between registries

The Rust Security Response Team was notified that Cargo incorrectly normalized the URLs of third-party registries using the [sparse index protocol][1]. If a hosting provider allowed multiple registries to be hosted with arbitrary names within the same domain, an attacker able to publish crates in a registry could obtain the credentials of others users of the same registry.

This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-5222. The severity of the vulnerability is low, due to the extremely niche requirements needed to achieve the attack.

Overview

Originally Cargo only supported storing a registry's index within git repositories. Most git hosting solutions allow accessing a git repository with or without the .git suffix, so Cargo mirrored this behavior when normalizing registry URLs. This allowed credentials for https://example.com/index to be used for https://example.com/index.git.

This normalization was unintentionally applied to the new sparse indexes too. Sparse indexes can be hosted on any HTTPS server, which treat URLs ending with .git as different URLs than those without the suffix.

If the following conditions apply:

https://example.com/index is a sparse index. https://example.com/index allows crates to depend on crates from any other registry. The attacker is able to publish crates on https://example.com/index. The attacker is able to upload arbitrary files to https://example.com/index.git.

...the attacker could configure https://example.com/index.git to be a Cargo sparse registry requiring authentication for downloads, and with a download URL pointing to a server recording any credentials set to it.

When the attacker then publishes a crate foo to https://example.com/index depending on a crate bar from https://example.com/index.git, and tricks the victim into downloading foo, Cargo will think the two registries share the same credential and send the victim's Cargo token to the malicious registry.

Mitigations

Rust 1.96, to be released on May 28th, 2026, will update Cargo to only strip the .git suffix from registry URLs using the git protocol. No mitigations are available for users of older versions of Cargo.

Affected versions

All versions of Cargo shipped between Rust 1.68 (the stabilization of sparse registries) and 1.96 are affected.

Acknowledgements

We'd like to thank Christos Papakonstantinou for reporting this to us according to the [Rust security policy][2].

We also want to thank the members of the Rust project who helped us address the vulnerability: Arlo Siemens for developing the fix; Weihang Lo, Eric Huss and Emily Albini for reviewing the fix; Emily Albini for writing this advisory; Emily Albini, Josh Stone and Manish Goregaokar for coordinating the disclosure.

[1]: https://doc.rust-lang.org/cargo/reference/registries.html#registry-protocols [2]: https://rust-lang.org/policies/security

CVE-2026-5223: Crates in third party registries can override the cached source of other crates

The Rust Security Response Team was notified that 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.

This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2026-5223. 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.

Overview

When building a crate, Cargo extracts its source code in a local cache (stored within ~/.cargo), reusing it for any future build. Cargo includes protections to prevent any file from being extracted outside of the crate's own cache directory.

It was discovered that it's possible to craft a malicious tarball able to extract files one level below the crate's own cache directory. With the way the cache is structured, that allowed the malicious crate to override the cache of other crates belonging to the same registry.

Mitigations

Rust 1.96.0, to be released on May 28th, 2026, will update Cargo to reject extracting any symlink within crate tarballs, regardless of whether they come from crates.io (which already forbids them) or third-party registries. Note that Cargo never added symlinks when running cargo package or cargo publish, so the impact of this should be minimal.

Users who are not able to upgrade to the most recent Rust version are recommended to audit the contents of their registry for the presence of any symlink, and to configure their registry to reject symlink (if such option is available).

Affected versions

All versions of Cargo shipped before Rust 1.96.0 are affected.

Acknowledgements

We'd like to thank Christos Papakonstantinou for reporting this to us according to the [Rust security policy][1].

We also want to thank the members of the Rust project who helped us address the vulnerability: Josh Triplett for developing the fix; Arlo Siemsen for reviewing the fix; Emily Albini for writing this advisory; Emily Albini, Josh Stone and Manish Goregaokar for coordinating the disclosure; Ed Page and Eric Huss for advising during the disclosure.

[1]: https://rust-lang.org/policies/security -- -Alan Coopersmith- alan.coopersmith () oracle com Oracle Solaris Engineering - https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris

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.

Cargo between 1.68 and 1.96 incorrectly normalized the URLs of third-party registries using the sparse index protocol. If a hosting provider allowed multiple registries to be hosted with arbitrary names within the same domain, an attacker able to publish crates in a registry could obtain the credentials of others users of the same registry. The severity of the vulnerability is low, due to the extremely niche requirements needed to achieve the attack.