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Mallory
HighPublic exploit

Arbitrary file write via path traversal in Atril Document Viewer (< 1.26.2)

IdentifiersCVE-2023-52076CWE-22· Improper Limitation of a Pathname…

Atril Document Viewer (default document reader for the MATE desktop environment) prior to version 1.26.2 contains a path traversal vulnerability that enables arbitrary file write. By opening a crafted document, an attacker can cause Atril to write attacker-controlled file contents to an arbitrary filesystem path accessible to the victim user. The described constraint is that existing files cannot be overwritten, but the primitive can still be leveraged to achieve code execution in the context of the user (e.g., by writing new files into locations that influence execution or autostart behavior).

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

Successful exploitation allows an attacker to write arbitrary new files anywhere on the filesystem that the victim user has permission to write to. Although overwriting existing files is not possible per the provided description, the ability to plant new files can be used to facilitate remote command execution in the victim user context and to establish persistence (depending on writable locations and system configuration).

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

If upgrading is not immediately possible, reduce exposure by avoiding opening untrusted documents with Atril and by running document viewing in a sandboxed/isolated context (e.g., containerization, MAC policies) to limit writable filesystem locations available to the viewer process.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade Atril to version 1.26.2 or later, which contains a patch for CVE-2023-52076.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

Exploits

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VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

No public exploit code observed for this vulnerability.

EXPOSURE SURFACE

Affected products & vendors

Products and vendors Mallory has correlated with this vulnerability. Open in Mallory to drill down to specific CPE configurations and version ranges.

VendorProductType
Mate-DesktopAtrilapplication

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Threat actor evidence

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Associated malware

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Detection signatures

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Vendor-by-vendor mapping

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Social activity3

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