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Medium · 5.9 CVE-2020-11934 EUVD-2020-4271GHSA-8cwp-mjww-pqc2

Sandbox escape vulnerability via snapctl user-open (xdg-open)

Published Jul 29, 2020 · Updated Sep 17, 2024 · Assigned by canonical

Description

It was discovered that snapctl user-open allowed altering the $XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable when calling the system xdg-open. OpenURL() in usersession/userd/launcher.go would alter $XDG_DATA_DIRS to append a path to a directory controlled by the calling snap. A malicious snap could exploit this to bypass intended access restrictions to control how the host system xdg-open script opens the URL and, for example, execute a script shipped with the snap without confinement. This issue did not affect Ubuntu Core systems. Fixed in snapd versions 2.45.1ubuntu0.2, 2.45.1+18.04.2 and 2.45.1+20.04.2.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
Canonical snapd 2.45.1 – < 2.45.1ubuntu0.2 2.45.1ubuntu0.2

Fixed in Linux distributions

Distributions backport fixes, so the version that fixes this vulnerability differs per release — upgrade to at least the version shown. From the distributions' security trackers and advisories.

ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Debian 14 snapd 2.45.2-1 —
Debian 13 snapd 2.45.2-1 —
Debian 12 snapd 2.45.2-1 —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 20.04 LTS snapd 2.45.1+20.04.2 USN-4424-1
Ubuntu 18.04 LTS snapd 2.45.1+18.04.2 USN-4424-1
Ubuntu 16.04 LTS snapd 2.45.1ubuntu0.2 USN-4424-1

Advisories 1

References