Skip to content
Heist/ feed
Back to feed
High

Security advisory

Type: advisorySources: OSVCVE: CVE-2018-10361

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

CVE-2018-10361

core-osv · Original source

Published 25 Apr 2018, 05:29 UTC

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"
}