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Protocol Handler Vulnerability Fix

· 2 min read
zeke
zeke

A remote code execution vulnerability has been discovered affecting Electron apps that use custom protocol handlers. This vulnerability has been assigned the CVE identifier CVE-2018-1000006.

Affected Platforms​

Electron apps designed to run on Windows that register themselves as the default handler for a protocol, like myapp://, are vulnerable.

Such apps can be affected regardless of how the protocol is registered, e.g. using native code, the Windows registry, or Electron's app.setAsDefaultProtocolClient API.

macOS and Linux are not vulnerable to this issue.

Mitigation​

We've published new versions of Electron which include fixes for this vulnerability: 1.8.2-beta.5, 1.7.12, and 1.6.17. We urge all Electron developers to update their apps to the latest stable version immediately.

If for some reason you are unable to upgrade your Electron version, you can append -- as the last argument when calling app.setAsDefaultProtocolClient, which prevents Chromium from parsing further options. The double dash -- signifies the end of command options, after which only positional parameters are accepted.

app.setAsDefaultProtocolClient(protocol, process.execPath, [
  '--your-switches-here',
  '--',
]);

See the app.setAsDefaultProtocolClient API for more details.

To learn more about best practices for keeping your Electron apps secure, see our security tutorial.

If you wish to report a vulnerability in Electron, email security@electronjs.org.