CVE-2017-16667 — backintime (aka Back in Time) before 1

backintime (aka Back in Time) before 1.1.24 did improper escaping/quoting of file paths used as arguments to the 'notify-send' command, leading to some parts of file paths being executed as shell commands within an os.system call in qt4/plugins/notifyplugin.py. This cou

01What is this vulnerability?

backintime (aka Back in Time) before 1.1.24 did improper escaping/quoting of file paths used as arguments to the 'notify-send' command, leading to some parts of file paths being executed as shell commands within an os.system call in qt4/plugins/notifyplugin.py. This could allow an attacker to craft an unreadable file with a specific name to run arbitrary shell commands.

02Affected products

No structured affected-product list available — see references below for vendor advisories.

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2017-11-08T18:29:00.247
• Last modified: 2026-05-13T00:24:29.033

09References

• github.com — https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/commit/cef81d0da93ff601252607df3db1a48f7f…
• github.com — https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/issues/834
• github.com — https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/releases/tag/v1.1.24
• security.gentoo.org — https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201801-06
• github.com — https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/commit/cef81d0da93ff601252607df3db1a48f7f…
• github.com — https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/issues/834
• github.com — https://github.com/bit-team/backintime/releases/tag/v1.1.24
• security.gentoo.org — https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201801-06