zed-industries zed 0.197.3 settings.json command injection

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability, which was classified as critical, was found in zed-industries zed. Impacted is an unknown function of the file settings.json. The manipulation results in command injection. This vulnerability is reported as CVE-2025-68433. The attack requires a local approach. No exploit exists. You should upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability classified as critical has been found in zed-industries zed. Affected is some unknown functionality of the file settings.json. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a command injection vulnerability. CWE is classifying the issue as CWE-77. The product constructs all or part of a command using externally-influenced input from an upstream component, but it does not neutralize or incorrectly neutralizes special elements that could modify the intended command when it is sent to a downstream component. This is going to have an impact on confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

Zed, a code editor, has an aribtrary code execution vulnerability in versions prior to 0.218.2-pre. The Zed IDE loads Model Context Protocol (MCP) configurations from the `settings.json` file located within a project’s `.zed` subdirectory. A malicious MCP configuration can contain arbitrary shell commands that run on the host system with the privileges of the user running the IDE. This can be triggered automatically without any user interaction besides opening the project in the IDE. Version 0.218.2-pre fixes the issue by implementing worktree trust mechanism. As a workaround, users should carefully review the contents of project settings files (`./zed/settings.json`) before opening new projects in Zed.

The advisory is available at github.com. This vulnerability is traded as CVE-2025-68433 since 12/17/2025. The exploitability is told to be difficult. Local access is required to approach this attack. Technical details are known, but there is no available exploit. This vulnerability is assigned to T1202 by the MITRE ATT&CK project.

By approaching the search of inurl:settings.json it is possible to find vulnerable targets with Google Hacking.

Upgrading to version 0.218.2-pre eliminates this vulnerability.

If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

Productinfo

Vendor

• zed-industries

Name

• zed

Version

• 0.197.3

Website

• Product: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/

CPE 2.3info

• 🔒
• 🔒

CPE 2.2info

• 🔒
• 🔒

CVSSv4info

CVSSv3info

CVSSv2info

Exploitinginfo

Threat Intelligenceinfo

Countermeasuresinfo

Timelineinfo

Sourcesinfo

Entryinfo

If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

Discussion