Vulnerability RUSTSEC-2024-0433

A plugin name containing a path separator may allow an attacker to execute an arbitrary binary.

Such a plugin name can be provided through an attacker-controlled input to the following age APIs when the plugin feature flag is enabled:

• age::plugin::Identity::from_str (or equivalently str::parse::<age::plugin::Identity>())
• age::plugin::Identity::default_for_plugin
• age::plugin::IdentityPluginV1::new (the plugin_name argument)
• age::plugin::Recipient::from_str (or equivalently str::parse::<age::plugin::Recipient>())
• age::plugin::RecipientPluginV1::new (the plugin_name argument)

On UNIX systems, a directory matching age-plugin-* needs to exist in the working directory for the attack to succeed.

The binary is executed with a single flag, either --age-plugin=recipient-v1 or --age-plugin=identity-v1. The standard input includes the recipient or identity string, and the random file key (if encrypting) or the header of the file (if decrypting). The format is constrained by the age-plugin protocol.

An equivalent issue was fixed in the reference Go implementation of age, see advisory GHSA-32gq-x56h-299c.

Thanks to ⬡-49016 for reporting this issue.