CVE-2024-25082: 
NixOS vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Splinefont in FontForge through 20230101 allows command injection via crafted archives or compressed files. This vulnerability is tracked as CVE-2024-25082 and was discovered in early 2024. The vulnerability affects FontForge installations up to version 20230101 (CVE Details, NVD).

The vulnerability stems from FontForge's use of the system() function to execute commands for unpacking fonts from archives. The command line arguments provided include both the archive name and the font file name specified inside the archive, leading to a command injection vulnerability when processing specially-crafted archive files. The vulnerability has been assigned a CVSS v3.1 base score of 6.5 (MEDIUM) with vector string CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:N (Openwall).

The vulnerability could allow attackers to execute arbitrary commands through specially crafted archive files or compressed files processed by FontForge. This could lead to unauthorized command execution in the context of the FontForge application (Openwall).

A patch has been developed to address this vulnerability by switching from the system() function to glib's gspawnsync() for safer command execution. The fix was merged upstream on February 6, 2024, through pull request #5367. Various distributions have released security updates to address this vulnerability, including Debian, Ubuntu, and Fedora (GitHub PR, Fedora Update).

The vulnerability was disclosed alongside other font-related security issues in a detailed blog post titled 'Fonts are still a helvetica of a problem' by Canva's security team. The discovery has led to increased attention to security practices in font processing software (Openwall).