Detecting Command Injection Patterns

Overview

Command injection (CWE-78, OWASP A03:2021) shows up wherever an application shells out to a binary. Image conversion (convert), archive extraction (tar, unzip), video processing (ffmpeg), DNS lookup (dig), and "we just need to call this CLI tool once" are the common origins.

The vulnerability shape is universal: a string is built including user input, then handed to a shell interpreter. The shell parses the string with normal shell semantics — including ;, |, &, $(), backticks. Any of those in the user-controlled portion becomes shell-executable.

When the skill produces findings

Finding	Severity	Threshold	Affected control
Python `subprocess.run(..., shell=True)` with interpolation	CRITICAL	f-string / concat / format argument with `shell=True`	CWE-78
Python `os.system(...)` with interpolation	CRITICAL	non-literal argument	CWE-78
Python `os.popen(...)` with interpolation	CRITICAL	non-literal argument	CWE-78
Node `child_process.exec(...)` with template literal	CRITICAL	`${...}` in the command string	CWE-78
Node `child_process.execSync(...)` with template	CRITICAL	same	CWE-78
Ruby backticks with interpolation	CRITICAL	`cmd #{var}`	CWE-78
Ruby `Kernel#system(string)` with interpolation	CRITICAL	`system("cmd #{var}")`	CWE-78
Go `exec.Command("sh", "-c", ...)` with interpolation	HIGH	shell wrapper with var	CWE-78
PHP `system / exec / passthru / shell_exec` with $-interp	CRITICAL	`system("cmd $var")`	CWE-78
Java `Runtime.exec(String)` with concat	HIGH	single-string form (vs array) with var	CWE-78

Prerequisites

Python 3.9+
Target source tree on local filesystem

Instructions

Step 1 — Run the scanner

python3 ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/detecting-command-injection-patterns/scripts/scan_cmdi.py /path/to/repo

Options:

Usage: scan_cmdi.py PATH [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --output FILE      Write findings to FILE
  --format FMT       json | jsonl | markdown (default: markdown)
  --min-severity SEV (default: info)
  --include-tests    Include test directories (default: excluded)
  --languages LIST   Comma-separated subset to scan

Step 2 — Interpret findings

CRITICAL = direct user-input → shell construction. Fix immediately.

HIGH = pattern where the shell layer exists but user-input reachability needs verification.

Step 3 — Remediation

The universal fix: pass arguments as a list (array), not a single string. Most APIs have a list form that bypasses shell entirely.

See references/PLAYBOOK.md for per-language patterns.

Examples

Example 1 — Pre-commit on a media-processing service

python3 ${CLAUDE_PLUGIN_ROOT}/skills/detecting-command-injection-patterns/scripts/scan_cmdi.py \
    --min-severity high $(git diff --name-only main...HEAD | tr '\n' ' ')

Example 2 — CI gate

- name: Command-injection scan
  run: |
    python3 plugins/security/penetration-tester/skills/detecting-command-injection-patterns/scripts/scan_cmdi.py \
        . --min-severity high

Output

JSON / JSONL / Markdown. Exit codes: 0 clean, 1 high/critical, 2 error.

Error Handling

False positives common in build scripts that interpolate fixed build constants. Verify each finding by reading whether the interpolated value is user-reachable.

Resources

references/THEORY.md — Why shell=True is the default footgun, per-language shell-out idioms, argument-vector vs command-string semantics
references/PLAYBOOK.md — Per-language safe-shellout patterns (Python subprocess list-args, Node spawn, Ruby Open3.capture3, Go exec.Command list-args, Java ProcessBuilder, PHP escapeshellarg)