Arch Linux Security Advisory ASA-201611-29

Severity: High
Date : 2016-11-29
CVE-ID : CVE-2016-1248
Package : neovim
Type : arbitrary command execution
Remote : No
Link : https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/CVE

Summary

The package neovim before version 0.1.7-1 is vulnerable to arbitrary
command execution.

Resolution

Upgrade to 0.1.7-1.

pacman -Syu “neovim>=0.1.7-1”

The problem has been fixed upstream in version 0.1.7.

Workaround

None.

Description

A vulnerability has been discovered in vim which would allow arbitrary
shell commands to be run if a user opened a file with a malicious
modeline. This is due to lack of validation of values for a few
options. Those options’ values are then used in vim’s scripts to build
a command string that’s evaluated by execute, which is what allows the
shell commands to be run.

This has been fixed in Vim by patch 8.0.0056. Since Neovim shares this
code, it is also vulnerable.

Impact

An attacker is able to execute arbitrary commands by tricking a user to
open a malicious file with a special modeline.

References

https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/51927
https://github.com/vim/vim/commit/d0b5138ba4bccff8a744c99836041ef6322ed39a
https://github.com/neovim/neovim/commit/4fad66fbe637818b6b3d6bc5d21923ba72795040
https://access.redhat.com/security/cve/CVE-2016-1248