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Mallory
Critical

Git NTFS protection bypass in WSL

IdentifiersCVE-2019-1353CWE-22

CVE-2019-1353 affects Git before 2.24.1, 2.23.1, 2.22.2, 2.21.1, 2.20.2, 2.19.3, 2.18.2, 2.17.3, 2.16.6, 2.15.4, and 2.14.6. When Git is run inside Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) against a working directory located on a regular Windows drive backed by NTFS, NTFS-specific safety protections were not active. The issue is tied to incorrect handling of the core.protectNTFS setting, including lookup under the wrong option name such that intended protections could be silently ineffective. As a result, repository paths or filenames that should have been blocked under NTFS safety rules were not properly rejected in this execution context.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

An attacker able to induce a victim to clone, checkout, or otherwise process a malicious repository from Git running under WSL on an NTFS-backed Windows path could bypass NTFS filename protections. This can permit unsafe path materialization on disk, potentially enabling writes into sensitive repository locations such as .git-related paths or other unintended filesystem targets, depending on the crafted content and workflow. The practical security consequence is exposure to arbitrary file write conditions that can facilitate subsequent code execution or repository compromise in the victim user's context.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If immediate upgrade is not possible, avoid using Git under WSL against repositories stored on Windows NTFS drives when handling untrusted content. Prefer operating on repositories within native Linux filesystems inside WSL, and avoid cloning or checking out untrusted repositories in the affected configuration. Because the issue involves protections not being active in this environment, mitigation by configuration alone may be unreliable unless verified in a fixed version.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade Git to a fixed release: 2.24.1, 2.23.1, 2.22.2, 2.21.1, 2.20.2, 2.19.3, 2.18.2, 2.17.3, 2.16.6, 2.15.4, 2.14.6, or later in the respective supported branch. The fix ensures NTFS protections are correctly applied in the affected WSL-on-NTFS scenario and aligns protectNTFS behavior with the corrected implementation.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

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VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
Git-ScmGitapplication
OpensuseLeapoperating_system

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Threat actor evidence

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Associated malware

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Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

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Social activity

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