Terminal2Shell: Critical flaw grants instant shell access on every major OS
terminal2shell.com
Researchers disclose a 55-year-old vulnerability affecting macOS, Windows and Linux. Exploitation is trivial and requires no special tools. No patch exists.

Terminal2Shell is a design-level vulnerability in terminal emulators. When a terminal is launched, it immediately spawns a shell process and connects it directly to the user’s keyboard. From there, the attacker can issue arbitrary commands with the full privileges of the logged-in user.

Researchers have confirmed that the shell will execute any command typed into it, including commands that delete files, install software, and modify system configuration. In some cases, the shell has been observed executing commands the user typed themselves.

Product Vector Status
macOS Terminal.app, iTerm2, Ghostty, Warp VULNERABLE
Linux gnome-terminal, Konsole, xterm, Ctrl+Alt+F2 VULNERABLE
Windows cmd.exe, PowerShell, Windows Terminal, WSL VULNERABLE
FreeBSD / OpenBSD Literally the default experience VULNERABLE
DEC VT100 (1978) Physical serial cable VULNERABLE
Your router SSH, telnet, the little console port on the back VULNERABLE
VS Code Ctrl+` (one keystroke!) VULNERABLE
Microsoft Paint None known Not affected
      • Guiorgy@lemmy.ml
        4·
        18 hours ago

        What are you talking about? I don’t know what you use to browse Lemmy, but I use Voyager and it shows clearly that this was posted on the programmerhumor lemmy community/world/instance 😂

          • Infrapink@thebrainbin.orgOP
            2·
            6 hours ago

            OK, let’s all calm down and stop insulting each other.

            @[email protected] is using Mastodon account, so they probably won’t even see the magazine, as Mastodon doesn’t really support them.

            Lemmy is a federated social media software; basically, Lemmy is to Reddit as Mastodon is to Twitter. @[email protected] should know that the Fediverse is bigger than just Lemmy (I use mbin, which is also federated Reddit but different to Lemmy).

            Because Mastodon, Lemmy, and mbin all use ActivityPub, we can all talk to each other despite our accounts being on different websites running different software.

            • Guiorgy@lemmy.ml
              1·
              5 hours ago

              For what it’s worth I’ve been on Lemmy for barely over a month, so I’m still pretty new to this. I was not at all expecting to be talking to people from Mastodon or mbin here 🤔

              My understanding was that federation allowed many independent Lemmy instances to interact, but nit that it even included other platforms. Looks like I’ll have to do some reading into this whole thing.

              Thanks for trying to explain!