CVE-2023-27985 — emacsclient-mail

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

01What is this vulnerability?

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

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
n	a / n/a	n/a

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: 2023-03-09T00:00:00.000Z
• Last modified: 2025-03-05T16:57:02.029Z

09References

• www.openwall.com — https://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/03/08/2
• git.savannah.gnu.org — http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?h=emacs-29&id=d32091199ae5de5…
• debbugs.gnu.org — https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=60204
• www.openwall.com — http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2023/03/09/1
• www.gabriel.urdhr.fr — https://www.gabriel.urdhr.fr/2023/06/08/emacsclient-mail-shell-elisp-injections/