CAPEC-88: OS Command Injection
In this type of an attack, an adversary injects operating system commands into existing application functions. An application that uses untrusted input to build command strings is vulnerable. An adversary can leverage OS command injection in an application to elevate privileges, execute arbitrary commands and compromise the underlying operating system.
Examples
A transaction processing system relies on code written in a number of languages. To access this functionality, the system passes transaction information on the system command line. An attacker can gain access to the system command line and execute malicious commands by injecting these commands in the transaction data. If successful, the attacker can steal information, install backdoors and perform other nefarious activities that can compromise the system and its data.See also: A vulnerability in Mozilla Firefox 1.x browser allows an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on the UNIX/Linux operating system. The vulnerability is caused due to the shell script used to launch Firefox parsing shell commands that are enclosed within back-ticks in the URL provided via the command line. This can be exploited to execute arbitrary shell commands by tricking a user into following a malicious link in an external application which uses Firefox as the default browser (e.g. the mail client Evolution on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4).
Requirements and Mitigations
Requirements
Component properties that must be true for this threat to apply:
Mitigations
Component properties that mitigate this threat:
Affected Components
| Component | Description | Boundary |
|---|---|---|
| Container manager | Podman on Linux, and Podman Machine on Windows/macOS | Local host |