CVE-2023-40590 Information

Description

GitPython is a python library used to interact with Git repositories. When resolving a program Python/Windows look for the current working directory and after that the PATH environment. GitPython defaults to use the git command if a user runs GitPython from a repo has a git.exe or git executable that program will be run instead of the one in the user’s PATH. This is more of a problem on how Python interacts with Windows systems Linux and any other OS aren’t affected by this. But probably people using GitPython usually run it from the CWD of a repo. An attacker can trick a user to download a repository with a malicious git executable if the user runs/imports GitPython from that directory it allows the attacker to run any arbitrary commands. There is no fix currently available for windows users however there are a few mitigations. 1: Default to an absolute path for the git program on Windows like C:\\Program Files\\Git\\cmd\\git.EXE (default git path installation). 2: Require users to set the GIT_PYTHON_GIT_EXECUTABLE environment variable on Windows systems. 3: Make this problem prominent in the documentation and advise users to never run GitPython from an untrusted repo or set the GIT_PYTHON_GIT_EXECUTABLE env var to an absolute path. 4: Resolve the executable manually by only looking into the PATH environment variable.

Reference

https://docs.python.org/3/library/subprocess.html#popen-constructor https://github.com/gitpython-developers/GitPython/security/advisories/GHSA-wfm5-v35h-vwf4