CVE-2023-40590

Source
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-40590
Import Source
https://storage.googleapis.com/osv-test-cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2023-40590.json
JSON Data
https://api.test.osv.dev/v1/vulns/CVE-2023-40590
Aliases
Downstream
Related
Published
2023-08-28T17:24:09Z
Modified
2025-10-30T19:33:31Z
Severity
  • 7.8 (High) CVSS_V3 - CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H CVSS Calculator
Summary
Untrusted search path on Windows systems leading to arbitrary code execution
Details

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.

Database specific
{
    "cwe_ids": [
        "CWE-426"
    ]
}
References

Affected packages

Git /

Affected ranges