Prevent GitHub CLI and extensions from executing arbitrary commands from compromised GitHub Enterprise Server
Date: 2025-05
Affected: go/github.com/cli/go-gh/v2
Attack vector: rce
Category: vulnerability-disclosure
Severity: Medium
CVE: CVE-2025-48938
CWE: CWE-501

### Summary A security vulnerability has been identified in `go-gh` where an attacker-controlled GitHub Enterprise Server could result in executing arbitrary commands on a user's machine by replacing HTTP URLs provided by GitHub with local file paths for browsing. ### Details The GitHub CLI and CLI extensions allow users to transition from their terminal for a variety of use cases through the [`Browser` capability in `github.com/cli/go-gh/v2/pkg/browser`](https://github.com/cli/go-gh/blob/61bf393cf4aeea6d00a6251390f5f67f5b67e727/pkg/browser/browser.go): - Using the `-w, --web` flag, GitHub CLI users can view GitHub repositories, issues, pull requests, and more using their web browser - Using the `gh codespace` command set, GitHub CLI users can transition to Visual Studio Code to work with GitHub Codespaces This is done by using URLs provided through API responses from authenticated GitHub hosts when users execute `gh` commands. Prior to `2.12.1`, `Browser.Browse()` would attempt to open the provided URL using a variety of OS-specific approaches regardless of the scheme. An attacker-controlled GitHub Enterprise Server could modify API responses to use a specially tailored local executable path instead of HTTP URLs to resources. This could allow the attacker to execute arbitrary executables on the user's machine. In `2.12.1`, `Browser.Browse()` has been enhanced to allow and disallow a variety of scenarios to avoid opening or executing files on the filesystem without


Mitigations:

Architectural layers (MAESTRO):