Security rules of thumb (GNU tar 1.35)

#### 10.2.4 Security Rules of Thumb

This section briefly summarizes rules of thumb for avoiding security pitfalls.

- Protect archives at least as much as you protect any of the files being archived.
- Extract from an untrusted archive only into an otherwise-empty directory. This directory and its parent should be accessible only to trusted users. For example:

      $ chmod go-rwx .
      $ mkdir -m go-rwx dir
      $ cd dir
      $ tar -xvf /archives/got-it-off-the-net.tar.gz

  As a corollary, do not do an incremental restore from an untrusted archive.

- Do not let untrusted users access files extracted from untrusted archives without checking first for problems such as setuid programs.
- Do not let untrusted users modify directories that are ancestors of top-level arguments of `tar`. For example, while you are executing ‘`tar -cf /archive/u-home.tar /u/home`’, do not let an untrusted user modify `/`, `/archive`, or `/u`.
- Pay attention to the diagnostics and exit status of `tar`.
- When archiving live file systems, monitor running instances of `tar` to detect denial-of-service attacks.
- Avoid unusual options such as `--absolute-names` (`-P`), `--dereference` (`-h`), `--overwrite`, `--recursive-unlink`, and `--remove-files` unless you understand their security implications.