CVE-2023-49284
CWE-436Published: December 5, 2023· Updated: Jun 17, 2026
Official Description
fish is a smart and user-friendly command line shell for macOS, Linux, and the rest of the family. fish shell uses certain Unicode non-characters internally for marking wildcards and expansions. It will incorrectly allow these markers to be read on command substitution output, rather than transforming them into a safe internal representation. While this may cause unexpected behavior with direct input (for example, echo \UFDD2HOME has the same output as echo $HOME), this may become a minor security problem if the output is being fed from an external program into a command substitution where this output may not be expected. This design flaw was introduced in very early versions of fish, predating the version control system, and is thought to be present in every version of fish released in the last 15 years or more, although with different characters. Code execution does not appear to be possible, but denial of service (through large brace expansion) or information disclosure (such as variable expansion) is potentially possible under certain circumstances. fish shell 3.6.2 has been released to correct this issue. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.
Technical Analysis
CVE-2023-49284 requires local access, meaning attackers must already have a foothold on the target system.
Exploitation requires low privileges, which limits the exposure to scenarios where an attacker has already gained initial access.
A successful exploit results in complete confidentiality breach (data exposure), availability disruption (denial of service), with a CVSS base score of 6.6.
CVSS v3.1 Vector Breakdown
Affected Vendors & Products
Exploit & PoC Resources
Official Patches & Advisories
All References (6)
Quick Facts
Related CVEs (CWE-436)
Recommended Actions
- →Apply vendor patches immediately
- →Monitor CVE-2023-49284 in threat intel feeds
- →Review IDS/IPS signatures for exploitation attempts