date: 2014-01-28T00:00:00.000Z
summary: Pidgin uses clickable links to untrusted executables
discoveredBy: Originally by James Burton, Insomnia Security. Rediscovered by Yves Younan of Sourcefire VRT.
If a user clicks on a file:// URI in a received IM in Windows builds of Pidgin,
Pidgin attempts to execute the file. This can be dangerous if the file:// URI is
a path on a network share. This was originally reported in [
CVE-2011-3185](
{{< ref "cve-2011-3185-00" >}}) in 2011
and we attempted to fix it then, but failed.
Don't attempt to execute files when the user clicks a file:// URI. Instead, open
a file browser at the file's location.