pidgin-knotify: Arbitrary code execution

Background

pidgin-knotify is a Pidgin plug-in to display message notifications in KDE.

Description

pidgin-knotify does not properly sanitize shell metacharacters from received messages.

Impact

A remote attacker could send a specially crafted instant message, possibly resulting in execution of arbitrary code with the privileges of the Pidgin process.

Workaround

There is no known workaround at this time.

Resolution

Gentoo has discontinued support for pidgin-knotify. We recommend that users unmerge pidgin-knotify:

 # emerge --unmerge "x11-plugins/pidgin-knotify"