CVE-2021-4034

Public on 2022-01-26
Modified on 2023-01-18
Description
A local privilege escalation vulnerability was found on polkit's pkexec utility. The pkexec application is a setuid tool designed to allow unprivileged users to run commands as privileged users according predefined policies. The current version of pkexec doesn't handle the calling parameters count correctly and ends trying to execute environment variables as commands. An attacker can leverage this by crafting environment variables in such a way it'll induce pkexec to execute arbitrary code. When successfully executed the attack can cause a local privilege escalation given unprivileged users administrative rights on the target machine.
Severity
Important severity
Important
CVSS v3 Base Score
7.8
See breakdown

Affected Packages

Platform Package Release Date Advisory Status
Amazon Linux 2 - Core polkit 2022-01-27 ALAS2-2022-1745 Fixed
Amazon Linux 2023 polkit 2023-02-17 ALAS2023-2023-026 Fixed

CVSS Scores

Score Type Score Vector
Amazon Linux CVSSv3 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD CVSSv2 7.2 AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
NVD CVSSv3 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H