Zen-C Vulnerable to Command Injection via Malicious Output Filename

Zen C is a systems programming language that compiles to human-readable GNU C/C11. Prior to version 0.4.2, a command injection vulnerability (CWE-78) in the Zen C compiler allows local attackers to execute arbitrary shell commands by providing a specially crafted output filename via the -o command-line argument. The vulnerability existed in the main application logic (specifically in src/main.c), where the compiler constructed a shell command string to invoke the backend C compiler. This command string was built by concatenating various arguments, including the user-controlled output filename, and was subsequently executed using the system() function. Because system() invokes a shell to parse and execute the command, shell metacharacters within the output filename were interpreted by the shell, leading to arbitrary command execution. An attacker who can influence the command-line arguments passed to the zc compiler (like through a build script or a CI/CD pipeline configuration) can execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the user running the compiler. The vulnerability has been fixed in version 0.4.2 by removing system() calls, implementing ArgList, and internal argument handling. Users are advised to update to Zen C version v0.4.2 or later.