XZ Utils provide a general-purpose data-compression library plus command-line tools. Prior to version 5.8.3, if lzma_index_decoder() was used to decode an Index that contained no Records, the resulting lzma_index was left in a state where where a subsequent lzma_index_append() would allocate too little memory, and a buffer overflow would occur. This issue has been patched in version 5.8.3.

Malicious code was discovered in the upstream tarballs of xz, starting with version 5.6.0. Through a series of complex obfuscations, the liblzma build process extracts a prebuilt object file from a disguised test file existing in the source code, which is then used to modify specific functions in the liblzma code. This results in a modified liblzma library that can be used by any software linked against this library, intercepting and modifying the data interaction with this library.