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Fencer Intel
medium 5.9

CVE-2020-11934 json

Sandbox escape vulnerability via snapctl user-open (xdg-open)

published 6y ago modified 4mo ago also EUVD-2020-4271

cvss
5.9
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 30%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

It was discovered that snapctl user-open allowed altering the $XDG_DATA_DIRS environment variable when calling the system xdg-open. OpenURL() in usersession/userd/launcher.go would alter $XDG_DATA_DIRS to append a path to a directory controlled by the calling snap. A malicious snap could exploit this to bypass intended access restrictions to control how the host system xdg-open script opens the URL and, for example, execute a script shipped with the snap without confinement. This issue did not affect Ubuntu Core systems. Fixed in snapd versions 2.45.1ubuntu0.2, 2.45.1+18.04.2 and 2.45.1+20.04.2.

Patch / fix

  • Canonical snapd 2.45.1+18.04.2, 2.45.1+20.04.2, 2.45.1ubuntu0.2
  • snapd Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 2.45.2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2020-11934

  • snapd Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 2.45.1ubuntu0.2
  • snapd Ubuntu 18.04 LTS 2.45.1+18.04.2
  • snapd Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 2.45.1+20.04.2

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2020-11934

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

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Exploit prediction

0.37% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 30% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 5.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD 3.1 5.9 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:N
NVD 2.0 1.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:N/I:P/A:N

Affected products

  • Canonical snapd

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-668 Exposure of Resource to Wrong Sphere

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.