CVE-2021-41133

HIGH

Flatpak <1.10.4-1.12.0 - Privilege Escalation

Title source: llm
STIX 2.1

Description

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.

References (14)

Core 14
Core References
Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory
https://www.debian.org/security/2021/dsa-4984
Mailing List, Third Party Advisory mailing-list
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2021/10/26/9
Third Party Advisory vendor-advisory
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/202312-12

Scores

CVSS v3 8.8
EPSS 0.0006
EPSS Percentile 18.6%
Attack Vector LOCAL
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

CISA SSVC

Vulnrichment
Exploitation none
Automatable no
Technical Impact total

Details

CWE
CWE-20
Status published
Products (4)
debian/debian_linux 11.0
fedoraproject/fedora 33
fedoraproject/fedora 34
flatpak/flatpak < 1.8.2
Published Oct 08, 2021
Tracked Since Feb 18, 2026