SWORD: Shell command injection — GLSA 200803-06

Insufficient input checking in SWORD may allow shell command injection.

Affected packages

app-text/sword on all architectures
Affected versions < 1.5.8-r2
Unaffected versions >= 1.5.8-r2

Background

SWORD is a library for Bible study software.

Description

Dan Dennison reported that the diatheke.pl script used in SWORD does not properly sanitize shell meta-characters in the "range" parameter before processing it.

Impact

A remote attacker could provide specially crafted input to a vulnerable application, possibly resulting in the remote execution of arbitrary shell commands with the privileges of the user running SWORD (generally the web server account).

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

All SWORD users should upgrade to the latest version:

 # emerge --sync
 # emerge --ask --oneshot --verbose ">=app-text/sword-1.5.8-r2"

References

Release date
March 03, 2008

Latest revision
March 03, 2008: 01

Severity
high

Exploitable
remote

Bugzilla entries