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HIGH

Poetry's Untrusted Search Path can lead to Local Code Execution on Windows

Published Sep 7, 2022

Description

Poetry is a dependency manager for Python. To handle dependencies that come from a Git repository, Poetry executes various commands, e.g. `git config`. These commands are being executed using the executable’s name and not its absolute path. This can lead to the execution of untrusted code due to the way Windows resolves executable names to paths. Unlike Linux-based operating systems, Windows searches for the executable in the current directory first and looks in the paths that are defined in the `PATH` environment variable afterward. This vulnerability can lead to Arbitrary Code Execution, which would lead to the takeover of the system. If a developer is exploited, the attacker could steal credentials or persist their access. If the exploit happens on a server, the attackers could use their access to attack other internal systems. Since this vulnerability requires a fair amount of user interaction, it is not as dangerous as a remotely exploitable one. However, it still puts developers at risk when dealing with untrusted files in a way they think is safe. The victim could also not protect themself by vetting any Git or Poetry config files that might be present in the directory, because the behavior is undocumented. Versions 1.1.9 and 1.2.0b1 contain patches for this issue.

Affected products

Remediation

No remediation recorded yet.

Metrics

Weaknesses (1)

References (6)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner GitHub_M
Published Sep 7, 2022
Updated Apr 23, 2025
Reserved Jul 15, 2022
CISA Vulnrichment
Updated Apr 23, 2025
NVD
Status Modified
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity n/a
Public date n/a
GHSA-J4J9-7HG9-97G6