Newsbeuter: User-assisted execution of arbitrary code — GLSA 200809-12

Insufficient input validation in newsbeuter may allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands.

Affected packages

Background

Newsbeuter is a RSS/Atom feed reader for the text console.

Description

J.H.M. Dassen reported that the open-in-browser command does not properly escape shell metacharacters in the URL before passing it to system().

Impact

A remote attacker could entice a user to open a feed with specially crafted URLs, possibly resulting in the remote execution of arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the user running the application.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=net-news/newsbeuter-1.2"

References

• CVE-2008-3907

Release date
September 22, 2008

Latest revision
September 22, 2008: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries

• 236506