CVE-2022-4515 — A flaw was found in Exuberant Ctags in the way it handles the "-o" option

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

01What is this vulnerability?

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.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / Exuberant Ctags	All versions are affected

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2022-12-20T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2025-04-14T18:14:57.235Z

09References

• sourceforge.net — https://sourceforge.net/p/ctags/code/HEAD/tree/tags/ctags-5.8/sort.c#l56
• lists.debian.org — https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/12/msg00040.html