The LSP (Language Server Protocol) plugin in KDE Kate before 21.12.2 and KTextEditor before 5.91.0 tries to execute the associated LSP server binary when opening a file of a given type. If this binary is absent from the PATH, it will try running the LSP server binary in the directory of the file that was just opened (due to a misunderstanding of the QProcess API, that was never intended). This can be an untrusted directory.

An issue was discovered in KTextEditor 5.34.0 through 5.45.0. Insecure handling of temporary files in the KTextEditor's kauth_ktexteditor_helper service (as utilized in the Kate text editor) can allow other unprivileged users on the local system to gain root privileges. The attack occurs when one user (who has an unprivileged account but is also able to authenticate as root) writes a text file using Kate into a directory owned by a another unprivileged user. The latter unprivileged user conducts a symlink attack to achieve privilege escalation.