Opera: Command-line URL shell command injection — GLSA 200512-10

Lack of URL validation in Opera command-line wrapper could be abused to execute arbitrary commands.

Affected packages

Package	www-client/opera on all architectures
Affected versions	< 8.51
Unaffected versions	>= 8.51

Background

Opera is a multi-platform web browser.

Description

Peter Zelezny discovered that the shell script used to launch Opera parses shell commands that are enclosed within backticks in the URL provided via the command line.

Impact

A remote attacker could exploit this vulnerability by enticing a user to follow a specially crafted URL from a tool that uses Opera to open URLs, resulting in the execution of arbitrary commands on the targeted machine.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All Opera users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=www-client/opera-8.51"

References

Release date
December 18, 2005

Latest revision
December 18, 2005: 01

Severity
normal

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries

113239