CVE-2023-2491

Publication date 17 May 2023

Last updated 26 August 2025

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

A flaw was found in the Emacs text editor. Processing a specially crafted org-mode code with the "org-babel-execute:latex" function in ob-latex.el can result in arbitrary command execution. This CVE exists because of a CVE-2023-28617 security regression for the emacs package in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.8 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.2.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
emacs	23.04 lunar	Not affected
	22.10 kinetic	Not affected
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Not affected
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not in release
	16.04 LTS xenial	Ignored end of standard support
	14.04 LTS trusty	Ignored end of standard support
emacs23	23.04 lunar	Not in release
	22.10 kinetic	Not in release
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not in release
	20.04 LTS focal	Not in release
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not in release
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not in release
	14.04 LTS trusty	Ignored end of standard support
emacs24	23.04 lunar	Not in release
	22.10 kinetic	Not in release
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not in release
	20.04 LTS focal	Not in release
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not in release
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected
	14.04 LTS trusty	Ignored end of standard support
emacs25	23.04 lunar	Not in release
	22.10 kinetic	Not in release
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not in release
	20.04 LTS focal	Not in release
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not affected
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not in release
	14.04 LTS trusty	Not in release
xemacs21	23.04 lunar	Not affected
	22.10 kinetic	Not affected
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Not affected
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not affected
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected
	14.04 LTS trusty	Ignored end of standard support
xemacs21-packages	23.04 lunar	Not affected
	22.10 kinetic	Not affected
	22.04 LTS jammy	Not affected
	20.04 LTS focal	Not affected
	18.04 LTS bionic	Not affected
	16.04 LTS xenial	Not affected
	14.04 LTS trusty	Ignored end of standard support

Notes

rodrigo-zaiden

CVE-2023-28617 regression for Red Hat systems only.

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	7.8 · High
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	Low
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	High
Integrity impact	High
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H