What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2024-22204: Whoogle Search Limited File Write vulnerability

• Severity: medium (CVSS 5.3 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.8% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2024-01-23 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-22

Description

Whoogle Search is a self-hosted metasearch engine. Versions 0.8.3 and prior have a limited file write vulnerability when the configuration options in Whoogle are enabled. The `config` function in `app/routes.py` does not validate the user-controlled `name` variable on line 447 and `config_data` variable on line 437. The `name` variable is insecurely concatenated in `os.path.join`, leading to path manipulation. The POST data from the `config_data` variable is saved with `pickle.dump` which leads to a limited file write. However, the data that is saved is earlier transformed into a dictionary and the `url` key value pair is added before the file is saved on the system. All in all, the issue allows us to save and overwrite files on the system that the application has permissions to, with a dictionary containing arbitrary data and the `url` key value, which is a limited file write. Version 0.8.4 contains a patch for this issue.

Affected products

• benbusby whoogle-search: before 0.8.4 — fixed in 0.8.4

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: benbusby whoogle-search 0.8.4. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/blob/92e8ede24e9277a5440d403f75877209f1269884/app/routes.py#L419-L452
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/blob/92e8ede24e9277a5440d403f75877209f1269884/app/routes.py#L437
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/blob/92e8ede24e9277a5440d403f75877209f1269884/app/routes.py#L444
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/blob/92e8ede24e9277a5440d403f75877209f1269884/app/routes.py#L447
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/commit/3a2e0b262e4a076a20416b45e6b6f23fd265aeda
• https://securitylab.github.com/advisories/GHSL-2023-186_GHSL-2023-189_benbusby_whoogle-search/
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/blob/92e8ede24e9277a5440d403f75877209f1269884/app/routes.py#L419-L452
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/blob/92e8ede24e9277a5440d403f75877209f1269884/app/routes.py#L437
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/blob/92e8ede24e9277a5440d403f75877209f1269884/app/routes.py#L444
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/blob/92e8ede24e9277a5440d403f75877209f1269884/app/routes.py#L447
• https://github.com/benbusby/whoogle-search/commit/3a2e0b262e4a076a20416b45e6b6f23fd265aeda
• https://securitylab.github.com/advisories/GHSL-2023-186_GHSL-2023-189_benbusby_whoogle-search/

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