The original patch for a GNU tar directory traversal vulnerability (CVE-2002-0399) in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 2.1 uses an "incorrect optimization" that allows user-assisted attackers to overwrite arbitrary files via a crafted tar file, probably involving "/../" sequences with a leading "/".

Directory traversal vulnerability in GNU tar 1.13.19 through 1.13.25, and possibly later versions, allows attackers to overwrite arbitrary files during archive extraction via a (1) "/.." or (2) "./.." string, which removes the leading slash but leaves the "..", a variant of CVE-2001-1267.