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CRITICAL

Classroom 50 vulnerable to arbitrary file overwrite on the teacher's machine via symlink in a student repo (gh teacher download)

Published Oct 1, 2026

Description

Classroom 50 is a free and open-source tool for managing and grading programming assignments via GitHub. Prior to version 1.11.0, `gh teacher download` clones each student's assignment repository and then writes autograde artifacts (`result.json` and `results.json`) into the just-cloned working tree. The write followed symlinks, so a student who committed `result.json` or `results.json` as a **symlink** (materialized verbatim by `git clone`) could redirect the teacher's write to an arbitrary path — e.g. `~/.zshrc`, `~/.ssh/authorized_keys`, a cron file, or an in-clone `.git/hooks/*` file that git subsequently executes. The written bytes are attacker-controlled (the student's uploaded release asset for `result.json`; student-chosen submit-tag names for `results.json`). This is an arbitrary file write leading to code execution as the teacher, whose `gh` token carries `admin:org`, `repo`, and `workflow` across the entire classroom organization. Version 1.11.0 contains a patch. Some workarounds are available. Avoid running `gh teacher download` against untrusted student repositories, or run it inside a disposable sandbox / container with no access to sensitive host files or credentials. Inspect cloned trees for symlinked, hardlinked, or special (`result.json`/`results.json`) entries before allowing the artifact-refresh step to run.

Affected products

Remediation

No remediation recorded yet.

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References (2)

Change history (0)

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Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner GitHub_M
Published Oct 1, 2026
Updated Oct 1, 2026
Reserved Sep 21, 2026
CISA Vulnrichment
Updated Oct 1, 2026
NVD
Status Received
Modified Oct 1, 2026
Red Hat
Severity n/a
Public date n/a