CVE-2023-40590

Untrusted search path on Windows systems leading to arbitrary code execution

State
Published
Severity
7.8 High
Published
Aug 28, 2023
Updated
Oct 2, 2024
Reserved
Aug 16, 2023

Read the record on cve.org

Description

GitPython is a python library used to interact with Git repositories. When resolving a program, Python/Windows look for the current working directory, and after that the PATH environment. GitPython defaults to use the `git` command, if a user runs GitPython from a repo has a `git.exe` or `git` executable, that program will be run instead of the one in the user's `PATH`. This is more of a problem on how Python interacts with Windows systems, Linux and any other OS aren't affected by this. But probably people using GitPython usually run it from the CWD of a repo. An attacker can trick a user to download a repository with a malicious `git` executable, if the user runs/imports GitPython from that directory, it allows the attacker to run any arbitrary commands. There is no fix currently available for windows users, however there are a few mitigations. 1: Default to an absolute path for the git program on Windows, like `C:\\Program Files\\Git\\cmd\\git.EXE` (default git path installation). 2: Require users to set the `GIT_PYTHON_GIT_EXECUTABLE` environment variable on Windows systems. 3: Make this problem prominent in the documentation and advise users to never run GitPython from an untrusted repo, or set the `GIT_PYTHON_GIT_EXECUTABLE` env var to an absolute path. 4: Resolve the executable manually by only looking into the `PATH` environment variable.

Scores

CVSSScoreVectorSource
3.17.8 HighCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:HGitHub_M

Weaknesses

Affected Products

ProductVersions
GitPythongitpython-developers
  • <= 3.1.32Affected

References

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