CVE-2017-17458 Mercurial vulnerable to arbitrary code injection

What is CVE-2017-17458?

CVE-2017-17458 is a critical command injection vulnerability in Debian Debian Linux, published on 7 Dec 2017. An attacker can exploit it over the internet without logging in, with no action from the victim.

Official description

In Mercurial before 4.4.1, it is possible that a specially malformed repository can cause Git subrepositories to run arbitrary code in the form of a .git/hooks/post-update script checked into the repository. Typical use of Mercurial prevents construction of such repositories, but they can be created programmatically.

Weakness: CWE-78

Which versions are affected by CVE-2017-17458?

3 open source packages ship an affected version, including mercurial. It affects 2 products.

Products include Debian Debian Linux, Mercurial Mercurial.

How do I fix CVE-2017-17458?

Upgrade mercurial to 4.4.1 or later.

Upgrade, and pass arguments to programs as a list instead of through a shell. More about Command injection.

Is CVE-2017-17458 being exploited?

There is no known exploitation of CVE-2017-17458 in the wild and no public exploit code.

Other vulnerabilities in Debian Debian Linux

• CVE-2015-3306 ProFTPD Improper Access Control Exploited Critical 10.0
• CVE-2025-49113 RoundCube Webmail Deserialization of Untrusted Data Exploited Critical 9.9
• CVE-2026-24061 GNU InetUtils Argument Injection Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2025-39682 Linux Kernel Improper Check for Unusual or Exceptional Conditions Exploited Critical 9.8
• CVE-2024-9680 Mozilla Firefox Use-After-Free Exploited Critical 9.8

All Debian Debian Linux vulnerabilities

Sources

• CVE record
• NVD
• OSV
• GitHub advisory
• How this page is made

Also known as DEBIAN-CVE-2017-17458, DLA-1224-1, DLA-1414-2, GHSA-6v56-cpg6-3rpx, MGASA-2018-0041, PYSEC-2017-90 and 3 more.