Flatpak up to 1.18.0 flatpak-system-helper privileges management

Summaryinfo

A vulnerability was found in Flatpak up to 1.18.0 and classified as very critical. Affected by this vulnerability is an unknown functionality of the component flatpak-system-helper. Executing a manipulation can lead to privileges management. This vulnerability appears as CVE-2026-92162. The attack requires local access. There is no available exploit. It is suggested to upgrade the affected component.

Detailsinfo

A vulnerability was found in Flatpak up to 1.18.0. It has been declared as very critical. This vulnerability affects an unknown code of the component flatpak-system-helper. The manipulation with an unknown input leads to a privileges management vulnerability. The CWE definition for the vulnerability is CWE-269. The product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control for that actor. As an impact it is known to affect confidentiality, integrity, and availability. CVE summarizes:

Flatpak is a system for building, distributing, and running sandboxed desktop applications on Linux. Prior to version 1.18.1, on systems where at least one OCI remote is configured (most common on Fedora systems), a malicious local user in an active local session could use a crafted architecture name to trick the `flatpak-system-helper` process into creating a root-owned directory tree with contents determined by the OCI remote, plus a root-owned `lock` file and `icons` directory, outside the intended root directory. If this vulnerability is combined with other vulnerabilities also fixed in 1.18.1, the combination can lead to local root privilege escalation. This particular vulnerability is not believed to be exploitable if there are no OCI remotes configured (common on non-Fedora systems). Version 1.18.1 patches the issue.

The advisory is available at github.com. This vulnerability was named CVE-2026-92162 since 09/15/2026. The exploitation appears to be easy. Local access is required to approach this attack. The technical details are unknown and an exploit is not available. The structure of the vulnerability defines a possible price range of USD $0-$5k at the moment (estimation calculated on 10/20/2026). This vulnerability is assigned to T1068 by the MITRE ATT&CK project.

Upgrading to version 1.18.1 eliminates this vulnerability.

If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

Productinfo

Name

• Flatpak

Version

• 1.0
• 1.1
• 1.2
• 1.3
• 1.4
• 1.5
• 1.6
• 1.7
• 1.8
• 1.9
• 1.10
• 1.11
• 1.12
• 1.13
• 1.14
• 1.15
• 1.16
• 1.17
• 1.18.0

Website

• Product: https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/

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If you want to get best quality of vulnerability data, you may have to visit VulDB.

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