xar allows for a forward-slash separated path to be specified in the file name property, e.g. <name>x/foo</name> – as long as it doesn’t traverse upwards, and the path exists within the current directory. This means an attacker can create a .xar file which contains both a directory symlink, and a file with a name property which points into the extracted symlink directory. By abusing symlink directories in this manner, an attacker can write arbitrary files to any directory on the filesystem – providing the user has permissions to write to it.