The vulnerability arises because GitPython's set_value() method passes user-supplied values to Python's configparser without sanitizing newline characters. Although GitPython converts embedded newlines into indented continuation lines, Git itself accepts these indented lines as new section headers. This allows injection of a [core] section with a hooksPath setting pointing to an attacker-controlled directory. When Git operations that trigger hooks (commit, merge, checkout) run, they execute scripts from this malicious path. The issue was identified in the context of MLRun's project.push() method, which passes unsanitized author_name and author_email values to set_value(). The vulnerability enables persistent repository config poisoning and remote code execution in multi-user or shared environments. The recommended remediation is to reject any config values containing CR, LF, or NUL characters to prevent injection.

An attacker who can supply author_name or author_email to an application using GitPython's config_writer().set_value() can inject a malicious core.hooksPath into the repository's .git/config. This causes Git to execute attacker-controlled hook scripts during Git operations that invoke hooks, leading to remote code execution. In multi-user or shared repository environments, this can affect all users performing Git operations. On single-user setups, the impact depends on whether Git hooks are invoked automatically by the application.

A patch is available that modifies set_value() to raise an exception if the value contains carriage return (CR), line feed (LF), or null (NUL) characters, preventing injection. Users should upgrade to a fixed version of snowflake-cli that includes this patch or apply equivalent validation to reject unsafe input. Rejecting values with these characters is safer than stripping them, as silent normalization can mask unsanitized inputs.