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Fencer Intel
critical 9.8

CVE-2017-17458 json

Mercurial vulnerable to arbitrary code injection

published 2017-12-07 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also GHSA-6v56-cpg6-3rpx , PYSEC-2017-90 , EUVD-2017-0072

cvss
9.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
6.3%
EPSS 6.3% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 93%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

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.

Patch / fix

  • pypi mercurial 4.4.1
  • mercurial mercurial 4.4.1
  • mercurial Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 4.4.1-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-17458

  • mercurial Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 2.8.2-1ubuntu1.4
  • mercurial Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 3.7.3-1ubuntu1.1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2017-17458

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • mercurial SLE Software Development Kit 11 SP4 2.3.2-0.18.6.1
  • mercurial SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP3, SLE Software Development Kit 12 SP2 2.8.2-15.6.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2018:0127-1SUSE-SU-2018:0129-1

  • mercurial openSUSE Tumbleweed 5.9.1-2.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2024:10586-1

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2017-17458 updated cvss 6.3

mercurial: arbitrary command execution in mercurial repo with a git submodule

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 mercurial, mercurial-hgk, emacs-mercurial, emacs-mercurial-el Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 mercurial, mercurial-hgk, emacs-mercurial, emacs-mercurial-el
    affected: workaround, no fix planned “Disable sub-repositories”

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

6.33% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 93% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 9.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 10.0 AV:N/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
GitHub 3.0 9.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi mercurial
<4.4.1
4.4.1

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-78 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements used in an OS Command

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.