CVE-2022-4515

A flaw was found in Exuberant Ctags in the way it handles the “-o” option. This option specifies the tag filename. A crafted tag filename specified in the command line or in the configuration file results in arbitrary command execution because the externalSortTags() in sort.c calls the system(3) function in an unsafe way.

Mitigation

The --options=NONE command line option will disable the automatic reading of any configuration file, including the .ctags configuration file from the current directory. However, this option will prevent ctags of reading the specific configuration provided by a project via a version control system repository.