Security advisory
An issue was discovered in KTextEditor 5.34.0 through 5.45.0. Insecure handling of temporary files in the KTextEditor's kauth_ktexteditor_helper service (as utilized in the Kate text editor) can allow other unprivileged users on the local system to gain root privileges. The attack occurs when one user (who has an unprivileged account but is also able to authenticate as root) writes a text file using Kate into a directory owned by a another unprivileged user. The latter unprivileged user conducts a symlink attack to achieve privilege escalation.
- Products
- Not specified
- Affected versions
- Not specified
- Fixed versions
- Not specified
- CVEs
- CVE-2018-10361
- Confirmed fixed CVEs
- Not specified
- Updated in this feed
- 1 Nov 2026, 06:53 UTC · Revision 1
Source evidence
An issue was discovered in KTextEditor 5.34.0 through 5.45.0. Insecure handling of temporary files in the KTextEditor's kauth_ktexteditor_helper service (as utilized in the Kate text editor) can allow other unprivileged users on the local system to gain root privileges. The attack occurs when one user (who has an unprivileged account but is also able to authenticate as root) writes a text file using Kate into a directory owned by a another unprivileged user. The latter unprivileged user conducts a symlink attack to achieve privilege escalation.
osv:CVE-2018-10361
Complete source record
{
"id": "eda82f23f045271ed95fb938d230ee0cc3f37a1c7820617f5d791789a8abf637",
"url": "https://osv.dev/vulnerability/CVE-2018-10361",
"method": "structured",
"payload": {
"kind": "advisory",
"title": "CVE-2018-10361",
"summary": "An issue was discovered in KTextEditor 5.34.0 through 5.45.0. Insecure handling of temporary files in the KTextEditor's kauth_ktexteditor_helper service (as utilized in the Kate text editor) can allow other unprivileged users on the local system to gain root privileges. The attack occurs when one user (who has an unprivileged account but is also able to authenticate as root) writes a text file using Kate into a directory owned by a another unprivileged user. The latter unprivileged user conducts a symlink attack to achieve privilege escalation.",
"evidence": "osv:CVE-2018-10361",
"products": [],
"severity": "high",
"structured": {
"id": "CVE-2018-10361",
"aliases": [
"CVE-2018-10361"
],
"metrics": [
{
"type": "CVSS_V3",
"score": "CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H"
}
],
"affected": [
{
"ranges": [
{
"repo": "https://github.com/kde/ktexteditor",
"type": "GIT",
"events": [
{
"introduced": "e2e7285a75267dfe29d4200427893b3dcd638b53"
},
{
"last_affected": "4f679d8b45ecfc740da6b93c738be21c1c9d46b4"
}
],
"database_specific": {
"extracted_events": [
{
"cpe": "cpe:2.3:a:kde:ktexteditor:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*",
"range": [
{
"introduced": "5.34.0"
},
{
"last_affected": "5.45.0"
}
],
"source": "CPE_RANGE"
}
]
}
}
],
"database_specific": {
"source": "https://storage.googleapis.com/cve-osv-conversion/osv-output/CVE-2018-10361.json"
}
}
],
"modified": "2026-10-24T10:30:45.962194064Z",
"provider": "osv",
"references": [
"https://bugzilla.suse.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1033055"
],
"provider_metadata": {}
},
"related_cves": [
{
"value": "CVE-2018-10361",
"evidence": "/id"
}
],
"security_relevant": true,
"severity_evidence": "/severity/0/score"
},
"source_id": "core-osv",
"document_id": 436238,
"published_at": "2018-04-25T05:29:00.237+00:00"
}