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Malicious plugin names, recipients, or identities can cause arbitrary binary execution

Moderate
FiloSottile published GHSA-32gq-x56h-299c Dec 18, 2024

Package

gomod filippo.io/age/plugin (Go)

Affected versions

< 1.2.1

Patched versions

1.2.1

Description

A plugin name containing a path separator may allow an attacker to execute an arbitrary binary.

Such a plugin name can be provided to the age CLI through an attacker-controlled recipient or identity string, or to the plugin.NewIdentity, plugin.NewIdentityWithoutData, or plugin.NewRecipient APIs.

On UNIX systems, a directory matching ${TMPDIR:-/tmp}/age-plugin-* needs to exist for the attack to succeed.

The binary is executed with a single flag, either --age-plugin=recipient-v1 or --age-plugin=identity-v1. The standard input includes the recipient or identity string, and the random file key (if encrypting) or the header of the file (if decrypting). The format is constrained by the age-plugin protocol.

An equivalent issue was fixed by the rage project, see advisory GHSA-4fg7-vxc8-qx5w.

Thanks to ⬡-49016 for reporting this.

Severity

Moderate

CVE ID

No known CVE

Weaknesses

Path Traversal: '/../filedir'

The product uses external input to construct a pathname that should be within a restricted directory, but it does not properly neutralize /../ sequences that can resolve to a location that is outside of that directory. Learn more on MITRE.