CVE-2023-45823: Artifact Hub arbitrary file read vulnerability

Artifact Hub is a web-based application that enables finding, installing, and publishing packages and configurations for CNCF projects. During a security audit of Artifact Hub’s code base a security researcher identified a bug in which by using symbolic links in certain kinds of repositories loaded into Artifact Hub, it was possible to read internal files. Artifact Hub indexes content from a variety of sources, including git repositories. When processing git based repositories, Artifact Hub clones the repository and, depending on the artifact kind, reads some files from it. During this process, in some cases, no validation was done to check if the file was a symbolic link. This made possible to read arbitrary files in the system, potentially leaking sensitive information. This issue has been resolved in version 1.16.0. Users are advised to upgrade. There are no known workarounds for this vulnerability.