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CRITICAL severity

CVE-2021-39159 — binderhub

CRITICALFix: jupyterhub/binderhub@195caac

CVE-2021-39159 is a critical-severity (CVSS 9.8) Code Injection vulnerability in binderhub. A fix is available for binderhub — see the affected versions and patch details below.

remote code execution via git repo provider

Also known asGHSA-9jjr-qqfp-ppwxPYSEC-2021-371
Published
Updated
Affected
1 pkg
Patched
1 / 1
Exploits
None indexed
Exploitation data as of Oct 10, 2026 · OSV.dev, NVD, FIRST.org (EPSS)

EPSS Exploitation Probability

via FIRST.org ↗
1.9%probability of exploitation in next 30 days
Lower Risk0.00%
Lower risk than most CVEs79th percentile — riskier than 79% of all scored CVEsHighest risk
0.82%1.36%1.89%2.43%1.3%1.9%Apr 26Jul 26Oct 26

Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.

How urgent is this, really

CVE-2021-39159 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.

Where this sits among everything scored

Of 385,738 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.

Real-World Exposure

1 pkg affected
🐍binderhub

Real-time download stats are indexed for npm and PyPI packages. This vulnerability affects PyPI packages — download data is not available via public APIs for these ecosystems.

Description

Impact

A remote code execution vulnerability has been identified in BinderHub, where providing BinderHub with maliciously crafted input could execute code in the BinderHub context, with the potential to egress credentials of the BinderHub deployment, including JupyterHub API tokens, kubernetes service accounts, and docker registry credentials. This may provide the ability to manipulate images and other user created pods in the deployment, with the potential to escalate to the host depending on the underlying kubernetes configuration.

Patches

Patch below, or on GitHub

From 9f4043d9dddc1174920e687773f27b7933f48ab6 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Riccardo Castellotti <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2021 15:49:43 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Explicitly separate git-ls-remote options from positional
 arguments

---
 binderhub/repoproviders.py | 2 +-
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/binderhub/repoproviders.py b/binderhub/repoproviders.py
index f33347b..5d4b87c 100755
--- a/binderhub/repoproviders.py
+++ b/binderhub/repoproviders.py
@@ -484,7 +484,7 @@ class GitRepoProvider(RepoProvider):
             self.sha1_validate(self.unresolved_ref)
         except ValueError:
             # The ref is a head/tag and we resolve it using `git ls-remote`
-            command = ["git", "ls-remote", self.repo, self.unresolved_ref]
+            command = ["git", "ls-remote", "--", self.repo, self.unresolved_ref]
             result = subprocess.run(command, universal_newlines=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)
             if result.returncode:
                 raise RuntimeError("Unable to run git ls-remote to get the `resolved_ref`: {}".format(result.stderr))
-- 
2.25.1

Workarounds

Disable the git repo provider by specifying the BinderHub.repo_providers config, e.g.:

from binderhub.repoproviders import (GitHubRepoProvider,
                            GitLabRepoProvider, GistRepoProvider,
                            ZenodoProvider, FigshareProvider, HydroshareProvider,
                            DataverseProvider)

c.BinderHub.repo_providers =  {
            'gh': GitHubRepoProvider,
            'gist': GistRepoProvider,
            'gl': GitLabRepoProvider,
            'zenodo': ZenodoProvider,
            'figshare': FigshareProvider,
            'hydroshare': HydroshareProvider,
            'dataverse': DataverseProvider,
        }

References

Credit: Jose Carlos Luna Duran (CERN) and Riccardo Castellotti (CERN).

For more information

If you have any questions or comments about this advisory:

Affected Packages

1 total 1 fixed
EcosystemPackageVulnerable rangeFix
🐍PyPIbinderhuball versions0.2.0pip install --upgrade 'binderhub==0.2.0'

Affected Products

1 product · 1 configurations
Application
binderhubjupyter
< 0.2.0-n653
range

Detection & mitigation playbook

Open-source dependency
  1. Detect

    Scan your dependency tree (package-lock.json, pnpm-lock.yaml, requirements.txt, go.sum, etc.) for binderhub, including transitive dependencies — a direct dependency you never call can still pull in a vulnerable version.

  2. Fix

    Update binderhub to 0.2.0 or later, then make sure no transitive (indirect) dependency still pins the vulnerable range — O3 confirms CVE-2021-39159 is resolved across your whole dependency graph.

  3. Workarounds

    Stop passing untrusted input into the interpreter or shell: call the affected binary with an argument array rather than a composed command string, reject anything outside a strict allowlist of expected values, and run the component under an account that cannot reach beyond the work it legitimately does.

Frequently Asked Questions

### Impact A remote code execution vulnerability has been identified in BinderHub, where providing BinderHub with maliciously crafted input could execute code in the BinderHub context, with the potential to egress credentials of the BinderHub deployment, including JupyterHub API tokens, kubernetes service accounts, and docker registry credentials. This may provide the ability to manipulate images and other user created pods in the deployment, with the potential to escalate to the host depending on the underlying kubernetes configuration. ### Patches Patch below, or [on GitHub](https://githu
O3 Security · Impact-Aware SCA

Is CVE-2021-39159 in your dependencies?

Find it across PyPI, including transitive dependencies.

CVE-2021-39159: binderhub RCE — Fixed in 0.2.0