Rudolf Polzer has discovered a vulnerability in GNU a2ps, which potentially can be exploited by malicious, local users to gain escalated privileges.

The vulnerability is caused due to insufficient validation of shell escape characters in filenames and can potentially lead to execution of arbitrary commands.

This can e.g. be exploited when a user is using a wildcard in the filename for a2ps, which matches a filename that a malicious user can control (e.g. in a world-writeable directory).

Another exploit vector is when a2ps is used from within a script or program, which accesses files where the filename can be controlled by a malicious user.

The vulnerability has been confirmed in version 4.13. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution
Don't use the product on files with untrusted filenames.
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Provided and/or discovered by
Rudolf Polzer

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