Description

Flatpak is a system for building, distributing, and running sandboxed desktop applications on Linux. in versions before 1.10.9, 1.12.9, 1.14.6, and 1.15.8, a malicious or compromised Flatpak app could execute arbitrary code outside its sandbox. Normally, the `--command` argument of `flatpak run` expects to be given a command to run in the specified Flatpak app, optionally along with some arguments. However it is possible to instead pass `bwrap` arguments to `--command=`, such as `--bind`. It's possible to pass an arbitrary `commandline` to the portal interface `org.freedesktop.portal.Background.RequestBackground` from within a Flatpak app. When this is converted into a `--command` and arguments, it achieves the same effect of passing arguments directly to `bwrap`, and thus can be used for a sandbox escape. The solution is to pass the `--` argument to `bwrap`, which makes it stop processing options. This has been supported since bubblewrap 0.3.0. All supported versions of Flatpak require at least that version of bubblewrap. xdg-desktop-portal version 1.18.4 will mitigate this vulnerability by only allowing Flatpak apps to create .desktop files for commands that do not start with --. The vulnerability is patched in 1.15.8, 1.10.9, 1.12.9, and 1.14.6.

Classification

CVE ID: CVE-2024-32462

CVSS Base Severity: HIGH

CVSS Base Score: 8.4

CVSS Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N

Affected Products

Vendor: flatpak

Product: flatpak

Exploit Prediction Scoring System (EPSS)

EPSS Score: 0.04% (probability of being exploited)

EPSS Percentile: 15.83% (scored less or equal to compared to others)

EPSS Date: 2025-03-14 (when was this score calculated)

References

https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/security/advisories/GHSA-phv6-cpc2-2fgj
https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/commit/72016e3fce8fcbeab707daf4f1a02b931fcc004d
https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/commit/81abe2a37d363f5099c3d0bdcd0caad6efc5bf97
https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/commit/b7c1a558e58aaeb1d007d29529bbb270dc4ff11e
https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/commit/bbab7ed1e672356d1a78b422462b210e8e875931
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/ZFNSCFJVMAQK5AF55JBN7OSJP3CREDBD/
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/[email protected]/message/IB6VQAF5S2YOBULDHPUKPOEIKONOP5KO/
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2024/04/18/5

Timeline