A high-severity bug impacting two popular command-line text editing applications, Vim and Neovim, allow remote attackers to execute arbitrary OS commands. Security researcher Armin Razmjou warned that exploiting the bug is as easy as tricking a target into clicking on a specially crafted text file in either editor.
Razmjou outlined his research and created a proof-of-concept (PoC) attack demonstrating how an adversary can compromise a Linux system via Vim or Neowim. He said Vim versions before 8.1.1365 and Neovim before 0.3.6 are vulnerable to arbitrary code execution.
“[Outlined is] a real-life attack approach in which a reverse shell is launched once the user opens the file. To conceal the attack, the file will be immediately rewritten when opened. Also, the PoC uses terminal escape sequences to hide the modeline when the content is printed with cat. (cat -v reveals the actual content),” wrote Razmjou in a technical analysis of his research.
Vim is a popular modal (insert, visual or command) text editor based on the vi editor, a screen-oriented text editor originally created for the Unix operating system. A modeline is a configuration line that shares settings data to a display server and communicates display settings data.
Razmjou’s PoC is able to bypass modeline mitigations, which execute value expressions in a sandbox. That’s to prevent somebody from creating a trojan horse text file in modelines, the researcher said.
“However, the :source! command (with the bang [!] modifier) can be used to bypass the sandbox. It reads and executes commands from a given file as if typed manually, running them after the sandbox has been left,” according to the PoC report.
Vim and Neovim have both released patches for the bug (CVE-2019-12735) that the National Institute of Standards and Technology warns, “allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary OS commands via the :source! command in a modeline.”
“Beyond patching, it’s recommended to disable modelines in the vimrc (set nomodeline), to use the securemodelinesplugin, or to disable modelineexpr (since patch 8.1.1366, Vim-only) to disallow expressions in modelines,” the researcher said.
