Skip to content
Fencer Vulns
high 8.5

CVE-2023-52076 json

Remote Code Execution Vulnerability in Atril's EPUB ebook parsing

published 2024-01-25 2 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2023-56755

cvss
8.5
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
1.1%
EPSS 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 65%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Atril Document Viewer is the default document reader of the MATE desktop environment for Linux. A path traversal and arbitrary file write vulnerability exists in versions of Atril prior to 1.26.2. This vulnerability is capable of writing arbitrary files anywhere on the filesystem to which the user opening a crafted document has access. The only limitation is that this vulnerability cannot be exploited to overwrite existing files, but that doesn't stop an attacker from achieving Remote Command Execution on the target system. Version 1.26.2 of Atril contains a patch for this vulnerability.

Patch / fix

  • mate-desktop atril 1.26.2
  • atril Debian 12 1.26.0-2+deb12u3
  • atril Debian 14, Debian 13 1.26.2-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2023-52076

  • atril Ubuntu 20.04 LTS 1.24.0-1ubuntu0.1
  • atril Ubuntu 22.04 LTS 1.26.0-1ubuntu1.1
  • atril Ubuntu Pro 16.04 LTS 1.12.2-1ubuntu0.3+esm1
  • atril Ubuntu Pro 18.04 LTS 1.20.1-2ubuntu2+esm1

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2023-52076

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2023-52076 updated cvss 8.5

atril: Path traversal in Atril can lead to arbitrary file write and possible arbitrary code execution

  • Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
    not affected: vulnerable code not present

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
Proof of concept is public
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
2 y ago

Exploit prediction

1.08% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 65% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

Exploits and checks

  • github.com https://github.com/mate-desktop/atril/security/advisories/GHSA-6mf6-mxpc-jc37 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 8.5 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:L
NVD 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected products

  • mate-desktop atril

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-24 Path Traversal: '../filedir'
  • CWE-25 Path Traversal: '/../filedir'
  • CWE-27 Path Traversal: 'dir/../../filename'
  • CWE-22 Improper Limitation of a Pathname to a Restricted Directory

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.