The vulnerability resides in the gradle-completion script used for Bash auto‑completion. By injecting a malicious Gradle build file that contains backticks in a task description, a local user who triggers Bash completion (for example, by pressing Tab) can cause the shell to execute arbitrary commands. This leads to total loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability on the victim’s user account. The flaw satisfies CWE‑78 (OS Command Injection) and CWE‑157 (Invalid Input Predicate).

Systems that use the Gradle CLI with Bash completion enabled – any user who sources gradle-completion in their .bashrc or .bash_profile – are affected when the script version is 9.3.0 or earlier. The patch first appears in gradle-completion 9.3.1, and the issue does not exist in the newer version or in the Zsh completion mechanism.

The CVSS base score is 8.3, classifying it as high severity, but the EPSS score is under 1 %, indicating a very low rate of exploitation in the wild. An attacker must have local access to the machine, able to create or modify a Gradle build file in the directory where Bash auto‑completion is invoked. No remote exploitation or network attack is possible. The vulnerability is not in the CISA KEV catalog, further suggesting that active exploitation is unlikely.