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OpenAdvisories
High · 7.1 CVE-2026-39977 EUVD-2026-21045

flatpak-builder has a path traversal leading to arbitrary file read on host when installing licence files

Published Apr 9, 2026 · Updated Apr 9, 2026 · Assigned by GitHub_M

Description

flatpak-builder is a tool to build flatpaks from source. From 1.4.5 to before 1.4.8, the license-files manifest key takes an array of paths to user defined licence files relative to the source directory of the module. The paths from that array are resolved using g_file_resolve_relative_path() and validated to stay inside the source directory using two checks - g_file_get_relative_path() which does not resolve symlinks and g_file_query_file_type() with G_FILE_QUERY_INFO_NOFOLLOW_SYMLINKS which only applies to the final path component. The copy operation runs on host. This can be exploited by using a crafted manifest and/or source to read arbitrary files from the host and capture them into the build output. This vulnerability is fixed in 1.4.8.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
flatpak flatpak-builder >= 1.4.5, < 1.4.8 —

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 flatpak-builder 1.4.8-1 —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
Ubuntu 26.04 LTS flatpak-builder 1.4.8-1 —
Ubuntu 25.10 flatpak-builder No fix yet —
ReleasePackageFixed inAdvisory
openSUSE Tumbleweed flatpak-builder 1.4.8-1.1 openSUSE-SU-2026:10590-1

Advisories 1

References