KDE Project Security Advisory ============================= Title: kconfig: malicious .desktop files (and others) would execute code Risk Rating: High CVE: CVE-2019-14744 Versions: KDE Frameworks < 5.61.0 Date: 7 August 2019 Overview ======== The syntax Key[$e]=$(shell command) in *.desktop files, .directory files, and configuration files (typically found in ~/.config) was an intentional feature of KConfig, to allow flexible configuration. This could however be abused by malicious people to make the users install such files and get code executed even without intentional action by the user. A file manager trying to find out the icon for a file or directory could end up executing code, or any application using KConfig could end up executing malicious code during its startup phase for instance. After careful consideration, the entire feature of supporting shell commands in KConfig entries has been removed, because we couldn't find an actual use case for it. If you do have an existing use for the feature, please contact us so that we can evaluate whether it would be possible to provide a secure solution. Note that [$e] remains useful for environment variable expansion. Solution ======== KDE Frameworks 5 users: - update to kconfig >= 5.61.0 - or apply the following patch to kconfig: https://cgit.kde.org/kconfig.git/commit/?id=5d3e71b1d2ecd2cb2f910036e614ffdfc895aa22 kdelibs users: apply the following patch to kdelibs 4.14: https://cgit.kde.org/kdelibs.git/commit/?id=2c3762feddf7e66cf6b64d9058f625a715694a00 Credits ======= Thanks to Dominik Penner for finding and documenting this issue (we wish however that he would have contacted us before making the issue public) and to David Faure for the fix.
KDE SIG is evaluating the patch. As of this moment, we're holding off backporting anything, as our current default setup utilizes this feature for xdg-user-dir detection (e.g. So your user Desktop gets linked to the output from 'xdg-user-dir DESKTOP'. same for DOCUMENTS, PICTURE, VIDEOS). Need a better understanding of how the patch will impact this vs risk of remaining unpatched.
FEDORA-2019-48b691092f has been submitted as an update to Fedora 30. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2019-48b691092f
kf5-kconfig-5.59.0-1.fc30.1 has been pushed to the Fedora 30 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report. See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for instructions on how to install test updates. You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2019-48b691092f
kf5-kconfig-5.59.0-1.fc30.1 has been pushed to the Fedora 30 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 31 development cycle. Changing version to '31'.
This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 31 development cycle. Changing version to 31.
FEDORA-EPEL-2019-cbdfeee1a7 has been submitted as an update to Fedora EPEL 8. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2019-cbdfeee1a7
kf5-kconfig-5.59.0-1.el8.1 has been pushed to the Fedora EPEL 8 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report. See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for instructions on how to install test updates. You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-EPEL-2019-cbdfeee1a7
kf5-kconfig-5.59.0-1.el8.1 has been pushed to the Fedora EPEL 8 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.