CVE-2023-28100:
Flatpak is a system for building, distributing, and running sandboxed desktop applications on Linux. Versions prior to 1.10.8, 1.12.8, 1.14.4, and 1.15.4 contain a vulnerability similar to CVE-2017-5226, but using the `TIOCLINUX` ioctl command instead of `TIOCSTI`. If a Flatpak app is run on a Linux virtual console such as `/dev/tty1`, it can copy text from the virtual console and paste it into the command buffer, from which the command might be run after the Flatpak app has exited. Ordinary graphical terminal emulators like xterm, gnome-terminal and Konsole are unaffected. This vulnerability is specific to the Linux virtual consoles `/dev/tty1`, `/dev/tty2` and so on. A patch is available in versions 1.10.8, 1.12.8, 1.14.4, and 1.15.4. As a workaround, don't run Flatpak on a Linux virtual console. Flatpak is primarily designed to be used in a Wayland or X11 graphical environment.
CVE-2023-28101:
Flatpak is a system for building, distributing, and running sandboxed desktop applications on Linux. In versions prior to 1.10.8, 1.12.8, 1.14.4, and 1.15.4, if an attacker publishes a Flatpak app with elevated permissions, they can hide those permissions from users of the `flatpak(1)` command-line interface by setting other permissions to crafted values that contain non-printable control characters such as `ESC`. A fix is available in versions 1.10.8, 1.12.8, 1.14.4, and 1.15.4. As a workaround, use a GUI like GNOME Software rather than the command-line interface, or only install apps whose maintainers you trust.
3 ignored issues:
CVE-2021-41133:
Flatpak is a system for building, distributing, and running sandboxed desktop applications on Linux. In versions prior to 1.10.4 and 1.12.0, Flatpak apps with direct access to AF_UNIX sockets such as those used by Wayland, Pipewire or pipewire-pulse can trick portals and other host-OS services into treating the Flatpak app as though it was an ordinary, non-sandboxed host-OS process. They can do this by manipulating the VFS using recent mount-related syscalls that are not blocked by Flatpak's denylist seccomp filter, in order to substitute a crafted `/.flatpak-info` or make that file disappear entirely. Flatpak apps that act as clients for AF_UNIX sockets such as those used by Wayland, Pipewire or pipewire-pulse can escalate the privileges that the corresponding services will believe the Flatpak app has. Note that protocols that operate entirely over the D-Bus session bus (user bus), system bus or accessibility bus are not affected by this. This is due to the use of a proxy process `xdg-dbus-proxy`, whose VFS cannot be manipulated by the Flatpak app, when interacting with these buses. Patches exist for versions 1.10.4 and 1.12.0, and as of time of publication, a patch for version 1.8.2 is being planned. There are no workarounds aside from upgrading to a patched version.
CVE-2021-43860:
Flatpak is a Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework. Prior to versions 1.12.3 and 1.10.6, Flatpak doesn't properly validate that the permissions displayed to the user for an app at install time match the actual permissions granted to the app at runtime, in the case that there's a null byte in the metadata file of an app. Therefore apps can grant themselves permissions without the consent of the user. Flatpak shows permissions to the user during install by reading them from the "xa.metadata" key in the commit metadata. This cannot contain a null terminator, because it is an untrusted GVariant. Flatpak compares these permissions to the *actual* metadata, from the "metadata" file to ensure it wasn't lied to. However, the actual metadata contents are loaded in several places where they are read as simple C-style strings. That means that, if the metadata file includes a null terminator, only the content of the file from *before* the terminator gets compared to xa.metadata. Thus, any permissions that appear in the metadata file after a null terminator are applied at runtime but not shown to the user. So maliciously crafted apps can give themselves hidden permissions. Users who have Flatpaks installed from untrusted sources are at risk in case the Flatpak has a maliciously crafted metadata file, either initially or in an update. This issue is patched in versions 1.12.3 and 1.10.6. As a workaround, users can manually check the permissions of installed apps by checking the metadata file or the xa.metadata key on the commit metadata.
CVE-2022-21682:
Flatpak is a Linux application sandboxing and distribution framework. A path traversal vulnerability affects versions of Flatpak prior to 1.12.3 and 1.10.6. flatpak-builder applies `finish-args` last in the build. At this point the build directory will have the full access that is specified in the manifest, so running `flatpak build` against it will gain those permissions. Normally this will not be done, so this is not problem. However, if `--mirror-screenshots-url` is specified, then flatpak-builder will launch `flatpak build --nofilesystem=host appstream-utils mirror-screenshots` after finalization, which can lead to issues even with the `--nofilesystem=host` protection. In normal use, the only issue is that these empty directories can be created wherever the user has write permissions. However, a malicious application could replace the `appstream-util` binary and potentially do something more hostile. This has been resolved in Flatpak 1.12.3 and 1.10.6 by changing the behaviour of `--nofilesystem=home` and `--nofilesystem=host`.
vcswatch reports that
this package seems to have a new changelog entry (version
1.15.4-2, distribution
UNRELEASED) and new commits
in its VCS. You should consider whether it's time to make
an upload.
Here are the relevant commit messages:
commit 4343ecc031afd702c67cc8a9a5f595fc67443f35
Author: Simon McVittie <smcv@debian.org>
Date: Sat Mar 18 15:33:23 2023 +0000
Mention #1033098, #1033099 in previous changelog entry
![[bug history graph]](https://qa.debian.org/data/bts/graphs/f/flatpak.png){kind=link}