Untrusted Search Path vulnerability in the OpenSSL backend certificate loading 
mechanism of Qt has been discovered and has been assigned the CVE id 
CVE-2025-14575.

Affected versions: Qt 5.0.0 through Qt 6.5.9 and from Qt 6.6.0 to Qt 6.8.3 and 
from Qt 6.9.0 to  6.9.1, on Unix and Linux platforms (excluding macOS).

Impact: Untrusted Search Path vulnerability in Qt's OpenSSL backend on Unix and 
Linux allows loading of certificates from the current working directory under 
specific conditions.

This issue affects applications using Qt's SSL/TLS functionality on Unix-based 
systems (excluding macOS). Prior to Qt 6.9.2, a combination of canonicalPath 
returning an empty string for broken symlinks and QSslCertificate::fromPath 
searching the current directory when given an empty path could result in 
loading unexpected certificates as trusted system certificates.

The vulnerability requires specific preconditions to be exploitable: either 
broken symlinks must exist in the system CA certificates folder or a race 
condition must occur during certificate store updates, combined with the 
application running from an attacker-controlled directory (such as Downloads or 
/tmp). Successful exploitation could potentially allow an attacker to perform 
man-in-the-middle attacks by having malicious certificates loaded as trusted 
system certificates, potentially leading to information disclosure or integrity 
violations of encrypted communications.

This vulnerability is considered minor as it requires system misconfiguration 
and does not affect properly configured systems that support on-demand 
certificate loading (most modern systems).

CVSS 4.0 Score: 1.8 / Low
Vector String: CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:H/AT:P/PR:H/UI:N/VC:L/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N

Mitigation:
Ensure your system is properly configured to support on-demand certificate 
loading (most modern systems support this by default)
Verify that system CA certificate directories do not contain broken symlinks
Avoid running Qt applications from untrusted directories such as Downloads, 
/tmp, or other world-writable locations
Deploy applications with proper working directory controls

Solution: Update to Qt 6.5.10 or 6.8.4 or Qt 6.9.2 or later or apply patch.

Patches:
Dev: https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtbase/+/642967

6.9: https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/qtbase/+/645356 or 
https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/6.9/CVE-2025-14575-qtbase-6.9.diff

6.8: https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/tqtc-qtbase/+/645393 or 
https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/6.8/CVE-2025-14575-qtbase-6.8.diff

6.5: https://codereview.qt-project.org/c/qt/tqtc-qtbase/+/645812 or  
https://download.qt.io/official_releases/qt/6.5/CVE-2025-14575-qtbase-6.5.diff


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