CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-10289 — Use of unsafe yaml load

High CVSS 8.8

Use of unsafe yaml load. Allows instantiation of arbitrary objects. The flaw itself is caused by an unsafe parsing of YAML values which happens whenever an action message is processed to be sent, and allows for the creation of Python objects. Through this flaw in the ROS core package of actionlib, an attacker with local or remote access can make the ROS Master, execute arbitrary code in Python form. Consider yaml.safe_load() instead. Located first in actionlib/tools/library.py:132. See links for more info on the bug.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.8 (3.1)
Published
2020-08-20
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
operating-system
Weaknesses
CWE-20, CWE-502

Affected products

  • openrobotics / robot_operating_system

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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