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KDE has an unpatched security issue that's been made public

By - | Views: 27,001

Here's your morning dose of uh-oh, a security researcher has made an unfortunate vulnerability in KDE public. Not something we usually cover, but since there's no fix available it's worth letting you know.

The issue relates to how KDE handles .desktop and .directory files, since on KDE they allow what they call "Shell Expansion" allowing some nasty code to be run. The other issue, is that KDE will automatically execute them without you even opening the files. Discovered by Dominik "zer0pwn" Penner, you can see their write-up of the issue here:

Using a specially crafted .desktop file a remote user could be compromised by simply downloading and viewing the file in their file manager, or by drag and dropping a link of it into their documents or desktop.

Sadly, this makes the security issue one that's quite easy for someone to exploit, as long as they get you to download something containing the malicious file.

On Twitter, the KDE team posted:

For the moment avoid downloading .desktop or .directory files and extracting archives from untrusted sources.

However, that might not be good enough. Going by what else Penner also said on Twitter, it's not just .desktop or .directory files as any unknown filetype can be detected by KDE as an application/desktop mimetype making it a lot worse than originally thought. As long as a file contains "[Desktop Entry]" at the top, it seems KDE will have a go at parsing it.

On top of that, the KDE team were not made aware of the issue before this was all made public. So if you're running KDE, time to be super careful until a patch is out. Hopefully all distributions shipping KDE will be keeping a close eye on this for when a patch is available.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Security, Misc
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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42 comments
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WorMzy Aug 7, 2019
Quoting: TheSHEEEPFrankly, nothing is ever entirely safe. And the biggest safety risk is not some software vulnerability sitting hidden behind some execution layers, but something entirely different sitting in front of the monitor...

I always knew my cats were up to no good!
Shmerl Aug 7, 2019
Isn't there some way to disable automatic launching for such files? Autoruns is such an old nasty issue, that it's surprising KDE still has it enabled by default.


Last edited by Shmerl on 7 August 2019 at 7:10 pm UTC
Dragunov Aug 8, 2019
Good thing I use Gnome/Cinnamon :P
TheRiddick Aug 8, 2019
Quoting: ElectricPrismSo if you are one of those people this is for you:

Haha!

I always found it the other way around, gnome users talking about how fantastic their featureless (most extensions don't work) desktop is and how KDE is bloatware, meanwhile I moved from GNOME to PLASMA5 the other day and noticed things just work allot better and faster (even games work faster somehow).

Shrug.. Just saying. GNOME SUCKS!
Ari El Uno Aug 8, 2019
Quoting: Stupendous ManWhy didn't they notify the KDE team BEFORE publishing their write-up? That's what responsible disclosure is all about, and would have avoided this situation! Give the team a couple months to patch, and THEN make the write-up.
I'm a bug bounty hunter myself and any ethical hacker knows not to just disclose a bug to the world as soon as you find it. Pathetic.
They have to fix it ASAP, not a couple of MONTHS.
Izaic Aug 8, 2019
Quoting: DragunovGood thing I use Gnome/Cinnamon :P

Gnome just had malware use the extensions. At the very least, this plasma issue most likely hasn't been utilized in the wild.

That said, nothing is perfect, and there will always be security issues of some kind. It's why Linus Torvalds doesn't consider security issues any more important than bugs.
Stupendous Man Aug 8, 2019
Quoting: Ari El UnoThey have to fix it ASAP, not a couple of MONTHS.
Depends on the severity of the bug. Remember, if the hacker informs the company privately, ideally only the hacker and the company know of the vulnerability. But yeah, the sooner the better.
It is also normal procedure to ask before disclosing, no matter how long time has passed.
ShabbyX Aug 8, 2019
QuoteFor the moment avoid downloading .desktop or .directory files and extracting archives from untrusted sources.

It's not windows, nobody downloads software off the internet already
F.Ultra Aug 8, 2019
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Quoting: ShmerlIsn't there some way to disable automatic launching for such files? Autoruns is such an old nasty issue, that it's surprising KDE still has it enabled by default.

It's not autorun per say, it's more like KDE can execute some scripts from the .desktop file e.g in order to determine what to display as the title if you hover over it (not 100% sure since I'm basing this on reading from the KDE site for a few seconds).

Which of course in practice turns it into autorun, but since that was never the intended purpose there is not a way to disable the feature. If the KDE devs had understood that they had actually implemented autorun I'm sure that they would not have implemented this at all. Some one with lots of time on their hand could hunt over their bugzilla and see when this feature was implemented and why, high chance is that it was due to some feature request/bug-report.
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