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CVE-2026-5917highCWE-78

libgit2 Shell Command Injection via ssh_libssh2 Backend

21Vexday Risk Score

No sign of exploitation. No public exploitation artifact known so far.

ssvc Trackcvss 8.6epss 0.9%
exploitation probability
0.9%top 42% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
libgit2 versions before 1.8.7 and 1.9.0 before 1.9.7 built with the libssh2 SSH backend (USE_SSH=libssh2) contain a shell command injection vulnerability that allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands on an SSH server by supplying a repository path containing unescaped shell metacharacters such as single quotes, semicolons, or pipes. The gen_proto() function in ssh_libssh2.c inserts the repository path directly into a shell command string without escaping special characters before passing it to libssh2_channel_exec(), enabling an attacker to craft a malicious submodule URL in a .gitmodules file that, when processed during a recursive clone, causes the remote server's shell to interpret injected commands under the victim's SSH user account.
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:A/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
Affected products
libgit2 · libgit2