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CVE-2023-27985

25
FAUCET Score

CVE-2023-27985 describes a shell command injection vulnerability in emacsclient-mail.desktop within Emacs versions 28.1 through 28.2, stemming from improper handling of crafted mailto: URIs. This flaw, rated 7.8 HIGH on the CVSS scale, allows an attacker to execute arbitrary commands on a vulnerable system if a user interacts with a malicious URI. While the vulnerability has a high potential impact (confidentiality, integrity, and availability), there is currently no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code, or significant community discussion surrounding it. The issue is resolved in Emacs version 29.0.90.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
>= 28.1, <= 28.2CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:gnu:emacs:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

CVSS Data

CVSS version used by this source: 3.1

7.8HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Attack Complexity
LOW
Privileges Required
NONE
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality Impact
HIGH
Integrity Impact
HIGH
Availability Impact
HIGH
Exploitability Score
1.8
Impact Score
5.9
CvssVersion
3.1

Exploit Intelligence

EPSS Score
1.09%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
61.9%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-25
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0109 is in the 59th percentile among its peer group of 11,616 CVEs.

Social Chatter

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.0 Twitter, 0.1 Reddit, 0.1 Bluesky, 0.0 Mastodon, and 0.2 GitHub mentions.

Media Mentions

No media coverage found for this CVE.

The average CVE in this peer group has 0.3 InfoSec Media, 0.0 Vendor Blog, and 0.0 Security Researcher mentions.

Remediation

Patch Available

Vendor Patches (1)

microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: cbl2 emacs 28.2-4 on CBL Mariner 2.0Fixed in: 28.2-4

Vendor Advisories (2)

microsoft2023-Mar/CVE-2023-27985Important

emacsclient-mail.desktop in Emacs 28.1 through 28.2 is vulnerable to shell command injections through a crafted mailto: URI. This is related to lack of compliance with the Desktop Entry Specification. It is fixed in 29.0.90

Mar 14, 2023
redhatCVE-2023-27985Important

emacs: Shell command injection via a crafted mailto URI

Mar 8, 2023

References

git.savannah.gnu.org / cgit/emacs.git/commit
Issue TrackingPatch
debbugs.gnu.org / cgi/bugreport.cgi
Issue TrackingPatch
gabriel.urdhr.fr / 2023/06/08/emacsclient-mail-shell-elisp-injections
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2023/03/08/2
Mailing ListPatch
openwall.com / lists/oss-security/2023/03/09/1
Mailing ListPatch