CVE-2023-49284

Command substitution output can trigger shell expansion in fish shell

MEDIUM
6.6
CVSS Score
Published: December 4, 2023 at 11:46 PM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 06:35 AM UTC
1 product affected across 1 vendorFish

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Severity
MEDIUM6.6
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.5%

Description

fish is a smart and user-friendly command line shell for macOS, Linux, and the rest of the family. fish shell uses certain Unicode non-characters internally for marking wildcards and expansions. It will incorrectly allow these markers to be read on command substitution output, rather than transforming them into a safe internal representation. While this may cause unexpected behavior with direct input (for example, echo \UFDD2HOME has the same output as echo $HOME), this may become a minor security problem if the output is being fed from an external program into a command substitution where this output may not be expected. This design flaw was introduced in very early versions of fish, predating the version control system, and is thought to be present in every version of fish released in the last 15 years or more, although with different characters. Code execution does not appear to be possible, but denial of service (through large brace expansion) or information disclosure (such as variable expansion) is potentially possible under certain circumstances. fish shell 3.6.2 has been released to correct this issue. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v < 3.6.2
Affected range stops below 3.6.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

Remediation

No guide yet

No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet. What the record does show:

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
REQUIRED
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
NONE
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-436

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