Opera Command Line URL Shell Command Injection

Secunia Advisory: SA16907
Critical: Highly critical -
Impact: System access -
Where: From remote -
Solution Status: Vendor Patch -
Software: Opera 7.x, Opera 8.x

Secunia Research has discovered a vulnerability in Opera, which can be exploited by malicious people to compromise a user’s system.

The vulnerability is caused due to the shell script used to launch Opera parsing shell commands that are enclosed within backticks in the URL provided via the command line. This can e.g. be exploited to execute arbitrary shell commands by tricking a user into following a malicious link in an external application which uses Opera as the default browser (e.g. the mail client Evolution on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4).

This vulnerability can only be exploited on Unix / Linux based environments.

This vulnerability is a variant of: SA16869

The vulnerability has been confirmed in version 8.5 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4. Other versions and platforms may also be affected.

Solution: Update to version 8.51.

http://www.opera.com/download/

[Continue reading Secunia Advisory SA16907]