Affected versions of Git have a vulnerability whereby Git can be tricked into sending private credentials to a host controlled by an attacker. Git uses external "credential helper" programs to store and retrieve passwords or other credentials from secure storage provided by the operating system. Specially-crafted URLs that contain an encoded newline can inject unintended values into the credential helper protocol stream, causing the credential helper to retrieve the password for one server (e.g., good.example.com) for an HTTP request being made to another server (e.g., evil.example.com), resulting in credentials for the former being sent to the latter. There are no restrictions on the relationship between the two, meaning that an attacker can craft a URL that will present stored credentials for any host to a host of their choosing. The vulnerability can be triggered by feeding a malicious URL to git clone. However, the affected URLs look rather suspicious; the likely vector would be through systems which automatically clone URLs not visible to the user, such as Git submodules, or package systems built around Git. The problem has been patched in the versions published on April 14th, 2020, going back to v2.17.x. Anyone wishing to backport the change further can do so by applying commit 9a6bbee (the full release includes extra checks for git fsck, but that commit is sufficient to protect clients against the vulnerability). The patched versions are: 2.17.4, 2.18.3, 2.19.4, 2.20.3, 2.21.2, 2.22.3, 2.23.2, 2.24.2, 2.25.3, 2.26.1.
This vulnerability carries a CRITICAL severity rating with a CVSS v3.1 score of 9.3, indicating it can be exploited remotely over the network with relatively low complexity though user interaction is required and does not require pre-existing privileges . The vulnerability impacts confidentiality (data exposure), integrity (unauthorized modifications), for affected systems. Impacting 6 products from git, from git-scm, from canonical and 3 others, organizations running these solutions should prioritize assessment and patching.
Reported in 2020, this vulnerability emerged during an era marked by increased sophistication in supply chain attacks, cloud infrastructure vulnerabilities, and software-as-a-service (SaaS) security challenges. Security practices during this period emphasized zero-trust architectures, container security, and API protection.
2020-04-14T23:15:12.607
2024-11-21T05:33:47.230
Modified
CVSSv3.1: 9.3 (CRITICAL)
AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
10.0
2.9
| Type | Vendor | Product | Version/Range | Vulnerable? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Application | git | git | < 2.17.4 | Yes |
| Application | git | git | < 2.22.3 | Yes |
| Application | git-scm | git | < 2.18.3 | Yes |
| Application | git-scm | git | < 2.19.4 | Yes |
| Application | git-scm | git | < 2.20.3 | Yes |
| Application | git-scm | git | < 2.21.2 | Yes |
| Application | git-scm | git | < 2.23.2 | Yes |
| Application | git-scm | git | < 2.24.2 | Yes |
| Application | git-scm | git | < 2.25.3 | Yes |
| Application | git-scm | git | < 2.26.1 | Yes |
| Operating System | canonical | ubuntu_linux | 16.04 | Yes |
| Operating System | canonical | ubuntu_linux | 18.04 | Yes |
| Operating System | canonical | ubuntu_linux | 19.10 | Yes |
| Operating System | debian | debian_linux | 8.0 | Yes |
| Operating System | debian | debian_linux | 9.0 | Yes |
| Operating System | debian | debian_linux | 10.0 | Yes |
| Operating System | fedoraproject | fedora | 30 | Yes |
| Operating System | fedoraproject | fedora | 31 | Yes |
| Operating System | fedoraproject | fedora | 32 | Yes |
| Operating System | opensuse | leap | 15.1 | Yes |
SecUtils normalizes and enriches National Vulnerability Database (NVD) records by standardizing vendor and product identifiers, aggregating vulnerability metadata from both NVD and MITRE sources, and providing structured context for security teams. For git's affected products, we extract Common Platform Enumeration (CPE) data, Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE) classifications, CVSS severity metrics, and reference data to enable rapid vulnerability prioritization and asset correlation. This record contains no exploit code, proof-of-concept instructions, or attack methodologies—only defensive intelligence necessary for patch management, risk assessment, and security operations.