CVE-2018-17456

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 97.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: yes
Published: 2018-10-06 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-88

Description

Git before 2.14.5, 2.15.x before 2.15.3, 2.16.x before 2.16.5, 2.17.x before 2.17.2, 2.18.x before 2.18.1, and 2.19.x before 2.19.1 allows remote code execution during processing of a recursive "git clone" of a superproject if a .gitmodules file has a URL field beginning with a '-' character.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 14.04, 16.04, 18.04
Debian Linux: 9.0
git: from 2.14.0 before 2.14.5; from 2.15.0 before 2.15.3; from 2.16.0 before 2.16.5; from 2.17.0 before 2.17.2; from 2.18.0 before 2.18.1; from 2.19.0 before 2.19.1 — fixed in 2.14.5, 2.15.3, 2.16.5, 2.17.2, 2.18.1, 2.19.1
Tower: 3.3
Red Hat Enterprise Linux: 6.0, 6.7, 7.0, 7.3, 7.4, 7.5 (+1)
RedHat Enterprise Linux Desktop: 7.0
RedHat Enterprise Linux Server: 7.0
RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Aus: 7.6
RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Eus: 7.6
RedHat Enterprise Linux Server Tus: 7.6
RedHat Enterprise Linux Workstation: 7.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: git 2.14.5, 2.15.3, 2.16.5, 2.17.2. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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