Git is a revision control system. Prior to versions 2.45.1, 2.44.1, 2.43.4, 2.42.2, 2.41.1, 2.40.2, and 2.39.4, when cloning a local source repository that contains symlinks via the filesystem, Git may create hardlinks to arbitrary user-readable files on the same filesystem as the target repository in the `objects/` directory. Cloning a local repository over the filesystem may creating hardlinks to arbitrary user-owned files on the same filesystem in the target Git repository's `objects/` directory. When cloning a repository over the filesystem (without explicitly specifying the `file://` protocol or `--no-local`), the optimizations for local cloning will be used, which include attempting to hard link the object files instead of copying them. While the code includes checks against symbolic