What cause would there be to import antigravity in a CGI service – or anything other than a terminal in which you could already execute arbitrary code?
I am struggling to understand, even with the proof of concept, how the situation could arise where an attacker could realistically exploit this, based largely on the uselessness of the antigravity module.
There are multiple failings that don’t seem like a big deal taken in isolation:
- The PYTHONWARNINGS and whole Warning Filters system.
- The webbrowser module executing a given executable from an environment variable.
- The antigravity module running webbrowser.open() on import.
All of these sort of seem a bit like sacrificing good taste for convenience. But in combination, in a situation where you don’t control the environment variables, they do lead to arbitrary code execution.
In other words, it’s not all antigravity’s fault, but those side effects on import make this possible.
Add the not-too-far-fetched-seeming assumption that it’s fine to let the Internet define your environment variables, and it’s a plausible exploit.
This is why, as another commenter points out, defense in depth is so important.