Skip to content
Fencer Intel
high 8.8

CVE-2017-17521 json

uiutil.c in FontForge through 20170731 does not validate strings before launching the program specified by the BROWSER environment variable…

published 8y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2017-8681

cvss
8.8
version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.9%
EPSS 1.9% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 79%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

uiutil.c in FontForge through 20170731 does not validate strings before launching the program specified by the BROWSER environment variable, which might allow remote attackers to conduct argument-injection attacks via a crafted URL, a different vulnerability than CVE-2017-17534.

Patch / fix

  • fontforge Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1:20201107~dfsg-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-17521

  • fontforge SLE Module for Desktop Applications 15 SP6, openSUSE Leap 15.6 20200314-150200.3.9.1

suse advisories SUSE-SU-2025:1199-1

  • fontforge openSUSE Tumbleweed 20230101-6.1

opensuse advisories openSUSE-SU-2025:14981-1

Is CVE-2017-17521 in your stack? Fencer shows which of your repositories are affected as soon as an advisory lands, and opens the fix as a pull request.

Check with Fencer

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2017-17521 updated cvss 5.3

fontforge: Command injetion in help function uiutil.c

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 fontforge Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 fontforge
    affected: no fix planned “Will not fix”
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 fontforge
    affected: no fix available

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Exploit prediction

1.85% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 79% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 3.0 8.8 CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 6.8 AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-74 Improper Neutralization of Special Elements in Output Used by a Downstream Component

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.