GHSA-r3r2-35v9-v238
Briefcase: Windows MSI Installer Privilege Escalation via Insecure Directory Permissions
Packages
Details
As written in the advisory (Markdown source, shown as plain text).
### Impact
If a developer uses Briefcase to produce an Windows MSI installer for a project, and that project is installed for All Users (i.e., per-machine scope), the installation process creates an directory that inherits all the permissions of the parent directory. Depending on the location chosen by the installing user, this may allow a low privilege but authenticated user to replace or modify the binaries installed by the application. If an administrator then runs the altered binary, the binary will run with elevated privileges.
### Patches
The problem is caused by the template used to generate the WXS file for Windows projects. It was fixed with the following PRs:
* beeware/briefcase-windows-app-template#86
* beeware/briefcase-windows-VisualStudio-template#85
These patches have been backported to the templates used in Briefcase 0.3.26, 0.4.0, and 0.4.1. Re-running `briefcase create` on your Briefcase project will result in the updated templates being used.
### Workarounds
The change from beeware/briefcase-windows-app-template#86 can be added to any existing Briefcase .wxs file generated by Briefcase 0.3.24 or later.
### Resources
beeware/briefcase#2759 is a formal bug report of the problem.
References
External links from the advisory. They lead to third-party sites.
- https://github.com/beeware/briefcase/security/advisories/GHSA-r3r2-35v9-v238
- https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-33430
- https://github.com/beeware/briefcase/issues/2759
- https://github.com/beeware/briefcase-windows-VisualStudio-template/pull/85
- https://github.com/beeware/briefcase-windows-app-template/pull/86
- https://github.com/beeware/briefcase
- https://github.com/pypa/advisory-database/tree/main/vulns/briefcase/PYSEC-2026-27.yaml