Bug 858034 (CVE-2012-4427)

Summary:	CVE-2012-4427 gnome shell: browser integration plugin installs extensions without authorization
Product:	[Other] Security Response	Reporter:	Vincent Danen <vdanen>
Component:	vulnerability	Assignee:	Red Hat Product Security <security-response-team>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	unspecified	CC:	fmuellner, jlieskov, maxamillion, mclasen, otaylor, samkraju, walters
Target Milestone:	---	Keywords:	Security
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2021-10-19 21:57:10 UTC	Type:	---
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oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:	858036
Bug Blocks:

Description Vincent Danen 2012-09-17 20:27:57 UTC

Tavis Ormandy discovered that the browser extension installed as part of Gnome Shell (libgnome-shell-browser-plugin.so) would install Gnome Shell extensions without authorization from the user running the browser.  While the Gnome Shell extension installer does not install these extensions directly, it does pass them to Gnome Shell via D-BUS, which then in turn installs the extension from extensions.gnome.org.  If a malicious user were to upload a malicious extensions to extensions.gnome.org and coerce a user into visiting a site where the extension installer would request that application's installation, the extension would be installed without the victim's knowledge.

Comment 1 Vincent Danen 2012-09-17 20:29:05 UTC

The initial report was here:

http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/09/08/1

Comment 2 Vincent Danen 2012-09-17 20:29:34 UTC

Created gnome-shell tracking bugs for this issue

Affects: fedora-all [bug 858036]

Comment 3 Jan Lieskovsky 2012-09-18 11:23:09 UTC

Upstream bug report:
https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=684215

Comment 4 Matthias Clasen 2013-07-02 12:45:33 UTC

I think this is not a problem anymore, since browser behaviour has changed.
See discussion in the upstream bug