CVE-2021-41133

Sandbox bypass via recent VFS-manipulating syscalls

HIGH
7.8
CVSS Score
Published: October 8, 2021 at 12:00 AM UTC
Updated: June 17, 2026 at 04:07 AM UTC
3 products affected across 3 vendorsDebian LinuxFedoraFlatpak

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Severity
HIGH7.8
Exploit prediction
EPSS 0.4%
SSVC
No known exploit

Description

Flatpak is a system for building, distributing, and running sandboxed desktop applications on Linux. In versions prior to 1.10.4 and 1.12.0, Flatpak apps with direct access to AF_UNIX sockets such as those used by Wayland, Pipewire or pipewire-pulse can trick portals and other host-OS services into treating the Flatpak app as though it was an ordinary, non-sandboxed host-OS process. They can do this by manipulating the VFS using recent mount-related syscalls that are not blocked by Flatpak's denylist seccomp filter, in order to substitute a crafted `/.flatpak-info` or make that file disappear entirely. Flatpak apps that act as clients for AF_UNIX sockets such as those used by Wayland, Pipewire or pipewire-pulse can escalate the privileges that the corresponding services will believe the Flatpak app has. Note that protocols that operate entirely over the D-Bus session bus (user bus), system bus or accessibility bus are not affected by this. This is due to the use of a proxy process `xdg-dbus-proxy`, whose VFS cannot be manipulated by the Flatpak app, when interacting with these buses. Patches exist for versions 1.10.4 and 1.12.0, and as of time of publication, a patch for version 1.8.2 is being planned. There are no workarounds aside from upgrading to a patched version.

Affected

Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.

v ≤ 1.8.2v < 1.10.4v < 1.12.0v < 1.8.21.10.0 ≤ v ≤ 1.10.41.10.0 ≤ v < 1.10.41.11.0 ≤ v < 1.12.01.11.1 ≤ v < 1.12.11.8.0 ≤ v < 1.8.21.10.01.11.01.8.0
Affected range stops below 1.10.4, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.12.0, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.12.1, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement
Affected range stops below 1.8.2, so it looks safe — our inference, not a vendor statement

SSVC — Action Prioritization

SSVCNo known exploitNot automatableTotal impact

SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.

CVSS

Attack Vector
LOCAL
Complexity
LOW
Privileges
LOW
User Interaction
NONE
Scope
UNCHANGED
Confidentiality
HIGH
Integrity
HIGH
Availability
HIGH
Vector?

Quick Info

StatusMODIFIED
CWE
CWE-20NVD-CWE-Other

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