CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2018-7889 — Calibre-Ebook Calibre security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

gui2/viewer/bookmarkmanager.py in Calibre 3.18 calls cPickle.load on imported bookmark data, which allows remote attackers to execute arbitrary code via a crafted .pickle file, as demonstrated by Python code that contains an os.system call.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.0)
Published
2018-03-08
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
python/pypi
Weaknesses
CWE-502

Affected products

  • calibre-ebook / calibre / 3.18.0

Matched remediation archetype

Unsafe deserialization and object reconstruction

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Check exposure

  • Inventory serialization formats accepted from requests, queues, caches, files, cookies, and cross-service messages.
  • Trace whether untrusted input can select classes, types, callbacks, constructors, or object hooks during decoding.
  • Identify signing, schema validation, trust-boundary, and compatibility settings for each decoder.

Remediate safely

  • Replace native object deserialization with a data-only format and explicit schema validation.
  • If replacement is not immediate, use a safe decoder with a minimal type allowlist and disable polymorphic or executable hooks.
  • Update the affected library and add inert tests for unknown types, extra fields, malformed nesting, and unsigned data.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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