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Untrusted search path on Windows

High
sfc-gh-fochnik published GHSA-7hpq-3g6w-pvhf Jan 29, 2025

Package

maven snowflake-jdbc (Maven)

Affected versions

>= 3.2.3, <= 3.21.0

Patched versions

3.22.0

Description

Issue

Snowflake discovered and remediated a vulnerability in the Snowflake JDBC Driver. When the EXTERNALBROWSER authentication method is used on Windows, an attacker with write access to a directory in the %PATH% can escalate their privileges to the user that runs the vulnerable JDBC Driver version.

This vulnerability affects versions 3.2.3 through 3.21.0 on Windows. Snowflake fixed the issue in version 3.22.0.

Vulnerability Details

When the EXTERNALBROWSER authentication method is selected, the Snowflake JDBC Driver on non-macOS operating systems tries to open the SSO URL using xdg-open. Because xdg-open is a Linux program that doesn’t exist in a default Windows installation, a sufficiently privileged attacker could place a malicious executable in one of the directories on the %PATH% and achieve local privilege escalation to the user running the JDBC Driver.

Solution

Snowflake released version 3.22.0 of the Snowflake JDBC Driver, which fixes this issue. We recommend users upgrade to version 3.22.0.

Additional Information

If you discover a security vulnerability in one of our products or websites, please report the issue to HackerOne. For more information, please see our Vulnerability Disclosure Policy.

Severity

High

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
Low
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Unchanged
Confidentiality
High
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CVE ID

CVE-2025-24789

Weaknesses