Cyber Resilience

CVE-2021-21261

High

Published: 14 January 2021

Published
14 January 2021
Modified
21 November 2024
KEV Added
Patch
CVSS Score v3.1 7.3 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:L/A:N
EPSS Score 0.0011 28.6th percentile
Risk Priority 15 60% EPSS · 20% KEV · 20% CVSS

Summary

CVE-2021-21261 is a high-severity Injection (CWE-74) vulnerability in Flatpak Flatpak. Its CVSS base score is 7.3 (High).

Operationally, ranked at the 28.6th percentile by exploit likelihood (below the median); it is not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

EU & UK References

Vulnerability details

Flatpak is a system for building, distributing, and running sandboxed desktop applications on Linux. A bug was discovered in the `flatpak-portal` service that can allow sandboxed applications to execute arbitrary code on the host system (a sandbox escape). This sandbox-escape…

more

bug is present in versions from 0.11.4 and before fixed versions 1.8.5 and 1.10.0. The Flatpak portal D-Bus service (`flatpak-portal`, also known by its D-Bus service name `org.freedesktop.portal.Flatpak`) allows apps in a Flatpak sandbox to launch their own subprocesses in a new sandbox instance, either with the same security settings as the caller or with more restrictive security settings. For example, this is used in Flatpak-packaged web browsers such as Chromium to launch subprocesses that will process untrusted web content, and give those subprocesses a more restrictive sandbox than the browser itself. In vulnerable versions, the Flatpak portal service passes caller-specified environment variables to non-sandboxed processes on the host system, and in particular to the `flatpak run` command that is used to launch the new sandbox instance. A malicious or compromised Flatpak app could set environment variables that are trusted by the `flatpak run` command, and use them to execute arbitrary code that is not in a sandbox. As a workaround, this vulnerability can be mitigated by preventing the `flatpak-portal` service from starting, but that mitigation will prevent many Flatpak apps from working correctly. This is fixed in versions 1.8.5 and 1.10.0.

CWE(s)

Related Threats

No named actor attribution yet. ATT&CK technique mapping in progress for this CVE.

Affected Assets

flatpak
flatpak
0.11.4 — 1.8.5 · 1.9.1 — 1.10.0
debian
debian linux
10.0

Mitigating Controls

Likely Mitigating Controls AI

Per-CVE control mapping for this CVE has not run yet; the list below is derived from the weakness types (CWEs) cited in the NVD entry.

addresses: CWE-74

Developer assessments and testing (including injection-focused techniques) identify improper neutralization of special elements, and the verifiable flaw remediation corrects them pre-deployment.

addresses: CWE-74

Identifies indicators of injection attacks (command, SQL, LDAP, etc.) via anomaly and attack monitoring.

References