CVE-2017-18266: Canonical Ubuntu Linux

High severity, CVSS 8.8. EPSS: 2.5% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

The open_envvar function in xdg-open in xdg-utils before 1.1.3 does not validate strings before launching the program specified by the BROWSER environment variable, which might allow remote attackers to conduct argument-injection attacks via a crafted URL, as demonstrated by %s in this environment variable.

Affected products

• Canonical Ubuntu Linux: version 14.04 only; version 16.04 only; version 17.10 only; version 18.04 only
• Debian Debian Linux: version 7.0 only; version 8.0 only; version 9.0 only
• Freedesktop Xdg-Utils: before 1.1.3 (fixed in 1.1.3)

Published 2018-05-10. Last modified 2026-06-17.