CVE-2021-21300CWE-59

malicious repositories can execute remote code while cloning

High · published March 9, 2021

Patch now

High probability of exploitation

CVSS calls it high at 8.0. It sits in the 99.8th percentile for exploit probability.

CVSS v3.1
8.0
EPSS
89%
Percentile
99.8
In the wild
Unconfirmed
What it is

Git is an open-source distributed revision control system. In affected versions of Git a specially crafted repository that contains symbolic links as well as files using a clean/smudge filter such as Git LFS, may cause just-checked out script to be executed while cloning onto a case-insensitive file system such as NTFS, HFS+ or APFS (i.e. the default file systems on Windows and macOS). Note that clean/smudge filters have to be configured for that. Git for Windows configures Git LFS by default, and is therefore vulnerable. The problem has been patched in the versions published on Tuesday, March 9th, 2021. As a workaound, if symbolic link support is disabled in Git (e.g. via `git config --global core.symlinks false`), the described attack won't work. Likewise, if no clean/smudge filters such as Git LFS are configured globally (i.e. _before_ cloning), the attack is foiled. As always, it is best to avoid cloning repositories from untrusted sources. The earliest impacted version is 2.14.2. The fix versions are: 2.30.1, 2.29.3, 2.28.1, 2.27.1, 2.26.3, 2.25.5, 2.24.4, 2.23.4, 2.22.5, 2.21.4, 2.20.5, 2.19.6, 2.18.5, 2.17.62.17.6.

The record
Technical detail
CVSS v3.1
8.0 · HIGH
Vector
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N
CVSS v4.0
Not supplied
EPSS
0.88533 · 99.8th percentile
Weakness
CWE-59 · Improper Link Resolution Before File Access ('Link Following')
Published
2021-03-09T00:00Z
EPSS history
Timeline
  • 09 MAR 00:00Z
    malicious repositories can execute remote code while cloning
    cvelistv5