Predictive Vulnerability Intelligence.

Product

  • Product
  • Pricing
  • Documentation

Company

  • About
  • Partnerships
  • Blog
  • Support

Legal

  • Terms
  • Privacy
  • Data Licensing

© 2026 FAUCET Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

CVE-2022-4515

20
FAUCET Score

CVE-2022-4515 is a high-severity vulnerability in Exuberant Ctags, affecting Debian Linux and Exuberant Ctags projects. It allows for arbitrary command execution due to unsafe handling of the "-o" option, which specifies the tag filename. An attacker could craft a malicious filename, either via the command line or a configuration file, to execute arbitrary commands. The CVSS score is 7.8 (HIGH), indicating a local attack vector with low complexity, leading to high impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. There is currently no evidence of active exploitation, public exploit code (Metasploit, Nuclei, ExploitDB), or significant community discussion or media coverage.

Impacted Technologies

VendorProductVersion(s)CPE
All Versions ImpactedCPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:a:exuberant_ctags_project:exuberant_ctags:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
10.0CPE matchmatch criteria
cpe:2.3:o:debian:debian_linux:10.0:*:*:*:*:*:*:*

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
0.58%
Probability of exploitation in next 30 days
EPSS Percentile
44.1%
Percentile rank of EPSS score among Peer Group
As of 2026-07-27
Model: v2026.06.15
This CVE's current EPSS score of 0.0058 is in the 43rd percentile among its peer group of 11,621 CVEs.

Social Chatter

No social media mentions found for this CVE.

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 (11)

microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: azl3 ctags 6.1.0-1 on Azure Linux 3.0Fixed in: 6.1.0-1
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: 18511-16823Fixed in: 5.9.20220619.0-7
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: 18512-17084Fixed in: 6.1.0-1
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: 18510-16820Fixed in: 5.8-6
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: CBL Mariner 2.0 x64Fixed in: 5.9.20220619.0-7
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: CBL Mariner 2.0 ARMFixed in: 5.9.20220619.0-7
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: Azure Linux 3.0 x64Fixed in: 6.1.0-1
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: Azure Linux 3.0 ARMFixed in: 6.1.0-1
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: cm1 ctags 5.8-6 on CBL Mariner 1.0Fixed in: 5.8-6
microsoftpatch availablevia msrc
Product: cbl2 ctags 5.9.20220619.0-7 on CBL Mariner 2.0Fixed in: 5.9.20220619.0-7
redhatpatch availablevia redhat_api
Product: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8Fixed in: ctags-0:5.8-23.el8
View patch

Vendor Advisories (3)

microsoft2024-Jun/CVE-2022-4515

CVE-2022-4515

Jun 11, 2024
redhatCVE-2022-4515Moderate

ctags: arbitrary command execution via a tag file with a crafted filename

Dec 19, 2022
microsoft2022-Dec/CVE-2022-4515Important

A flaw was found in Exuberant Ctags in the way it handles the "-o" option. This option specifies the tag filename. A crafted tag filename specified in the command line or in the configuration file results in arbitrary command execution because the externalSortTags() in sort.c calls the system(3) function in an unsafe way.

Dec 13, 2022

References

lists.debian.org / debian-lts-announce/2022/12/msg00040.html
Mailing ListThird Party Advisory
sourceforge.net / p/ctags/code/HEAD/tree/tags/ctags-5.8/sort.c
ExploitThird Party Advisory