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Ubuntu 22.04 LTS / 24.04 LTS / 26.04 LTS : GNOME Shell vulnerability (USN-8971-1)

medium Nessus Plugin ID 375776

Synopsis

The remote Ubuntu host is missing a security update.

Description

The remote Ubuntu 22.04 LTS / 24.04 LTS / 26.04 LTS host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the USN-8971-1 advisory.

 It was discovered that GNOME Shell did not properly validate icon dimensions when processing icons from a remote search provider. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause GNOME Shell to crash, resulting in a denial of service, or expose sensitive information from memory.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

Solution

Update the affected gnome-shell, gnome-shell-common and / or gnome-shell-extension-prefs packages.

See Also

https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-8971-1

Plugin Details

Severity: Medium

ID: 375776

File Name: ubuntu_USN-8971-1.nasl

Version: 1.1

Type: Local

Agent: unix

Published: 11/4/2026

Updated: 11/4/2026

Supported Sensors: Frictionless Assessment AWS, Frictionless Assessment Azure, Frictionless Assessment Agent, Nessus Agent, Agentless Assessment, Continuous Assessment, Tenable Cloud Security, Tenable Self-Hosted Container Security, Nessus

Risk Information

VPR

Risk Factor: Low

Score: 3.5

Percentile: 51.47

CVSS v2

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 5.6

Temporal Score: 4.1

Vector: CVSS2#AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:C

CVSS Score Source: CVE-2026-91786

CVSS v3

Risk Factor: Medium

Base Score: 6.1

Temporal Score: 5.3

Vector: CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:H

Temporal Vector: CVSS:3.0/E:U/RL:O/RC:C

Vulnerability Information

CPE: cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:22.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:24.04:-:lts, cpe:/o:canonical:ubuntu_linux:26.04:-:lts, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:gnome-shell-common, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:gnome-shell-extension-prefs, p-cpe:/a:canonical:ubuntu_linux:gnome-shell

Required KB Items: Host/cpu, Host/Debian/dpkg-l, Host/Ubuntu, Host/Ubuntu/release

Exploit Ease: No known exploits are available

Patch Publication Date: 11/3/2026

Vulnerability Publication Date: 9/15/2026

Reference Information

CVE: CVE-2026-91786

USN: 8971-1