CVE-2017-17513
HighSummary
TeX Live through version 20170524 does not validate strings before launching the program specified by the BROWSER environment variable, which might allow remote attackers to conduct argument-injection attacks via a crafted URL.
Risk Assessment
Attackers could exploit this vulnerability to execute unauthorized commands on the victim's system, potentially leading to serious security breaches.
Recommendation
It is recommended to update TeX Live to the latest version to mitigate this vulnerability and to validate and restrict the value of the BROWSER variable.
Other vulnerabilities in TeX Live
See all- CVE-2016-10243Critical
TeX Live allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands by leveraging inclusion of mpost in shell_escape_commands in the texmf.cnf config file.
- CVE-2026-63729Medium
The SyncTeX parser (synctex_parser.c) in TeX Live and downstream applications like GNOME Evince contains a heap use-after-free vulnerability. Attackers can crash applications or potentially execute arbitrary code by supplying a malformed .synctex or .synctex.gz file.
Original NVD description (English source)
TeX Live through 20170524 does not validate strings before launching the program specified by the BROWSER environment variable, which might allow remote attackers to conduct argument-injection attacks via a crafted URL, related to linked_scripts/context/stubs/unix/mtxrun, texmf-dist/scripts/context/stubs/mswin/mtxrun.lua, and texmf-dist/tex/luatex/lualibs/lualibs-os.lua.