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MEDIUM

nautilus: Insufficient validation of trust of .desktop files with execute permission

Published Sep 20, 2017

Description

GNOME Nautilus before 3.23.90 allows attackers to spoof a file type by using the .desktop file extension, as demonstrated by an attack in which a .desktop file's Name field ends in .pdf but this file's Exec field launches a malicious "sh -c" command. In other words, Nautilus provides no UI indication that a file actually has the potentially unsafe .desktop extension; instead, the UI only shows the .pdf extension. One (slightly) mitigating factor is that an attack requires the .desktop file to have execute permission. The solution is to ask the user to confirm that the file is supposed to be treated as a .desktop file, and then remember the user's answer in the metadata::trusted field.

Affected products

Remediation

No remediation recorded yet.

Metrics

References (13)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner mitre
Published Sep 20, 2017
Updated Aug 5, 2024
Reserved Sep 20, 2017
NVD
Status Modified
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity Moderate
Public date Jan 31, 2017