Vulnerability in Flatpak

CVE-2024-32462

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.

EPSS: 0.005 (40.7th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 8.4 (High). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:N.

Affected products

Weakness classification (CWE)

Public proof-of-concept exploits

References

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2024-32462?
CVE-2024-32462 is a high-severity vulnerability in Flatpak, classified under Argument Injection. CVSS score: 8.4/10. Published 2024-04-18.
How severe is CVE-2024-32462?
High severity. CVSS v3 base score is 8.4 out of 10.
Is CVE-2024-32462 known to be exploited?
2 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.