USN-4661-1: Snapcraft vulnerability

Publication date

3 December 2020

Overview

An intended access restriction could be bypassed in snaps built with Snapcraft


Packages

Details

It was discovered that Snapcraft includes the current directory when
configuring LD_LIBRARY_PATH for application commands. If a user were
tricked into installing a malicious snap or downloading a malicious
library, under certain circumstances an attacker could exploit this to
affect strict mode snaps that have access to the library and when
launched from the directory containing the library.

It was discovered that Snapcraft includes the current directory when
configuring LD_LIBRARY_PATH for application commands. If a user were
tricked into installing a malicious snap or downloading a malicious
library, under certain circumstances an attacker could exploit this to
affect strict mode snaps that have access to the library and when
launched from the directory containing the library.

Update instructions

For users of the snap package, Snapcraft will automatically refresh itself to Snapcraft 4.4.4 which is unaffected. For users of the deb package, on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS, please perform a standard system update. In either case, once Snapcraft has been updated, you need to rebuild any packages built with the affected Snapcraft.

Learn more about how to get the fixes.

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu Release Package Version
18.04 LTS bionic snapcraft –  2.43.1+18.04.1
16.04 LTS xenial snapcraft –  2.43.1+16.04.1

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