Affected: nicolargo glances

Glances is an open-source system cross-platform monitoring tool. Prior to version 4.5.3, Glances supports dynamic configuration values in which substrings enclosed in backticks are executed as system commands during configuration parsing. This behavior occurs in Config.get_value() and is implemented without validation or restriction of the executed commands. If an attacker can modify or influence configuration files, arbitrary commands will execute automatically with the privileges of the Glances process during startup or configuration reload. In deployments where Glances runs with elevated privileges (e.g., as a system service), this may lead to privilege escalation. This issue has been patched in version 4.5.3.

Affected: PyPI: Glances

## Summary Glances supports dynamic configuration values in which substrings enclosed in backticks are executed as system commands during configuration parsing. This behavior occurs in Config.get_value() and is implemented without validation or restriction of the executed commands.

If an attacker can modify or influence configuration files, arbitrary commands will execute automatically with the privileges of the Glances process during startup or configuration reload. In deployments where Glances runs with elevated privileges (e.g., as a system service), this may lead to privilege escalation.

## Details

1. Glances loads configuration files from user, system, or custom paths during initialization. 2. When retrieving a configuration value, Config.get_value() scans for substrings enclosed in backticks.

**File: glances/config.py** ``` match = self.re_pattern.findall(ret) for m in match: ret = ret.replace(m, system_exec(m[1:-1])) ```

3. The extracted string is passed directly to system_exec().

**File: glances/globals.py** ```sh res = subprocess.run(command.split(' '), stdout=subprocess.PIPE).stdout.decode('utf-8') ```

4. The command is executed and its output replaces the original configuration value.

This execution occurs automatically whenever the configuration value is read.

### Affected Files

glances/config.py — dynamic configuration parsing

glances/globals.py — command execution helper

## Proof of Concept (PoC)

Scenario: Arbitrary comm…

Affected: PyPI: glances

Glances is an open-source system cross-platform monitoring tool. Prior to version 4.5.3, Glances supports dynamic configuration values in which substrings enclosed in backticks are executed as system commands during configuration parsing. This behavior occurs in Config.get_value() and is implemented without validation or restriction of the executed commands. If an attacker can modify or influence configuration files, arbitrary commands will execute automatically with the privileges of the Glances process during startup or configuration reload. In deployments where Glances runs with elevated privileges (e.g., as a system service), this may lead to privilege escalation. This issue has been patched in version 4.5.3.