As per https://www.tcl.tk/man/tcl8.6/TclCmd/exec.html#M23, Tcl's `exec`
function goes out of its way to imitate the highly dangerous path lookup
of `cmd.exe`, but _of course_ only on Windows:
If a directory name was not specified as part of the application
name, the following directories are automatically searched in
order when attempting to locate the application:
The directory from which the Tcl executable was loaded.
The current directory.
The Windows 32-bit system directory.
The Windows home directory.
The directories listed in the path.
The dangerous part is the second item, of course: `exec` _prefers_
executables in the current directory to those that are actually in the
`PATH`.
It is almost as if people wanted to Windows users vulnerable,
specifically.
To avoid that, Git GUI already has the `_which` function that does not
imitate that dangerous practice when looking up executables in the
search path.
However, Git GUI currently fails to use that function e.g. when trying to
execute `aspell` for spell checking.
That is not only dangerous but combined with Tcl's unfortunate default
behavior and with the fact that Git GUI tries to spell-check a
repository just after cloning, leads to a critical Remote Code Execution
vulnerability.
Let's override both `exec` and `open` to always use `_which` instead of
letting Tcl perform the path lookup, to prevent this attack vector.
This addresses CVE-2022-41953.
For more details, see
https://github.com/git-for-windows/git/security/advisories/GHSA-v4px-mx59-w99c
Signed-off-by: Johannes Schindelin <johannes.schindelin@gmx.de> Signed-off-by: Pratyush Yadav <me@yadavpratyush.com>