ast-cli: Auto-update downloads are not verified against a checksum before execution
- Published
- Last modified
- Where the record stands: published, rejected by its publisher, or superseded by another id.What do these mean? →
- published
- Whether CISA lists it in its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog: proof that attackers are using it.What do these mean? →
- Not listed in CISA KEV
- Whether working attack code is public (Exploit-DB, Metasploit, Nuclei or GitHub). Public code makes attacks easier.What do these mean? →
- None on Exploit-DB, Metasploit or GitHub
Summary
The ast-cli command-line tool from Checkmarx, specifically its auto-update flow for the ASCA real-time engine and SCA Resolver helper binaries (used via the VSCode/JetBrains extensions and "cx scan sca-realtime"), is affected. An attacker who could substitute the archive served from the download host could get arbitrary code extracted and executed on developer machines or CI pipelines.
Summarized by anthropic/claude-haiku-5.5. Verify details against the original sources.
Read the original description
ast-cli downloads two helper binaries, the Vorpal ASCA real-time engine and the SCA Resolver, from "download.checkmarx.com" as part of its auto-update flow, triggered by the Checkmarx’s "VSCode/JetBrains" extensions and by cx scan "sca-realtime". Prior to the fix, the downloaded archive was not verified against a checksum before extraction and execution. An attacker able to substitute the served archive could deliver an arbitrary binary that ast-cli would extract and execute the contents of the archive, since no integrity check was performed on the download. Successful exploitation requires compromising "download.checkmarx.com" and replacing the served archive with one containing an attacker-controlled binary. If the served archive had been replaced that way, any developer machine or CI pipeline invoking ASCA (via Checkmarx's VSCode/JetBrains extensions) or cx scan "sca-realtime" on an affected version would have extracted and executed that binary in place of the intended download. The download is now verified against a published SHA-256 checksum before extraction.
Timeline
- CVE published
- First seen by cve.now
Affected versions
- github.com/checkmarx/ast-cli
through 2.3.59