CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2022-41955 — Autolabproject Autolab security vulnerability

High CVSS 8.8

Autolab is a course management service, initially developed by a team of students at Carnegie Mellon University, that enables instructors to offer autograded programming assignments to their students over the Web. A remote code execution vulnerability was discovered in Autolab's MOSS functionality, whereby an instructor with access to the feature might be able to execute code on the server hosting Autolab. This vulnerability has been patched in version 2.10.0. As a workaround, disable the MOSS feature if it is unneeded by replacing the body of `run_moss` in `app/controllers/courses_controller.rb` with `render(plain: "Feature disabled", status: :bad_request) && return`.

Severity
High
CVSS
8.8 (3.1)
Published
2023-01-14
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-78, CWE-77

Affected products

  • autolabproject / autolab

Matched remediation archetype

Command, code, expression, and template injection

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Check exposure

  • Trace untrusted values to process execution, interpreters, evaluators, template engines, dynamic imports, and administrative scripting features.
  • Determine whether the affected path is reachable across each trust boundary and which service account or host privilege it inherits.
  • Review configuration for optional execution features, unsafe compatibility modes, and shell invocation.

Remediate safely

  • Replace string-built commands or evaluated code with fixed operations and structured argument APIs that do not invoke a shell.
  • Use strict allowlists for operation identifiers and reject unexpected input before it reaches any interpreter.
  • Update the affected component and add inert regression tests covering metacharacters, encoding variants, and alternate request paths.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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