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My working solution is to iterate through members, and ensuring that
os.path.abspath(os.path.join(path, member)) always .startswith(path).
This seems like a better solution than trying to trap on a pattern in
the string. Presumably the same fix can be made to tarfile.
For what it's worth, OS X's BOMArchiveManager will place a file stored
as '../foo.txt' in the extract path, not the directory right outside it.
While we're on the topic, there may also be a bug in this, or the
tarfile package that would allow a malicious archive to extract a
symlink to an existing directory somewhere on the target machine, and
files extracted to that symlink. I haven't really thought that through,
but I'm sure that my fix won't correct that possible issue.