What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2017-14604

• Severity: medium (CVSS 6.5 v3.1)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 2.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: yes
• Published: 2017-09-20 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-20

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

• Debian Linux: 8.0, 9.0, 10.0
• GNOME Nautilus: before 3.23.90 — fixed in 3.23.90

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: GNOME Nautilus 3.23.90. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• http://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3994
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/101012
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:0223
• https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=860268
• https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=777991
• https://github.com/GNOME/nautilus/commit/1630f53481f445ada0a455e9979236d31a8d3bb0
• https://github.com/GNOME/nautilus/commit/bc919205bf774f6af3fa7154506c46039af5a69b
• https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop/issues/2238
• https://micahflee.com/2017/04/breaking-the-security-model-of-subgraph-os/
• http://www.debian.org/security/2017/dsa-3994
• http://www.securityfocus.com/bid/101012
• https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2018:0223

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