🛡️ CVE-2024-53920 — emacs

🟠 CVSS 7.8 — High ✅ No Known Exploit CWE-94 NVD

7.8

CVSS Score

0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

In elisp-mode.el in GNU Emacs before 30.1, a user who chooses to invoke elisp-completion-at-point (for code completion) on untrusted Emacs Lisp source code can trigger unsafe Lisp macro expansion that allows attackers to execute arbitrary code. (This unsafe expansion also occurs if a user chooses to enable on-the-fly diagnosis that byte compiles untrusted Emacs Lisp source code.)

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached with local access to the system, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs no privileges on the target. A user must be tricked into taking some action. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity high, availability high.

Weakness class

CVE-2024-53920 is classified as CWE-94: Code Injection. Input is incorporated into code that the runtime evaluates, so an attacker can have their own code executed.

Affected software

CVE-2024-53920 is recorded against 1 package.

emacs (fixed in 30.1)

Timeline and source

Published on 27 November 2024 and last revised on 17 June 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from NVD.

References

eshelyaron.com
git.savannah.gnu.org
git.savannah.gnu.org
git.savannah.gnu.org
news.ycombinator.com
yhetil.org
lists.debian.org

CVE-2024-53920 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Debian Ubuntu

Details

Severity HIGH

CVSS Score 7.8

CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CWE CWE-94

Public Exploit ✅ No

Source NVD

Published 2024-11-27

Updated 2026-08-20

Modified 2026-06-17

Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software	From version	Fixed in
emacs	—	30.1

References

Third Party Advisory https://eshelyaron.com/posts/2024-11-27-emacs-aritrary-code-execution-and-how-to-avoid-it.html

Product https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tag/?h=emacs-30.0.92

Release Notes https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/ChangeLog.4

Product https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/tree/etc/NEWS?h=emacs-30.1

Issue Tracking https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42256409

Mailing List https://yhetil.org/emacs/CAFXAjY5f4YfHAtZur1RAqH34UbYU56_t6t2Er0YEh1Sb7-W=hg@mail.gmail.com/

https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2025/02/msg00033.html

🔗 NVD 🔗 Mitre

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