cve-2021-4034

HIGH CVSS 7.8 opencve
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.

Timeline
Published
2022-01-28 20:15 UTC
Last Modified
2026-08-15
CVSS Details

CVSS details not available.

Affected Products

No product information available.

Weaknesses (CWE)
CVSS metrics
Version Base Severity Vector Exploitability Impact Source
3.1 7.8 HIGH CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H nvd
3.1 7.8 HIGH CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H opencve
3.1 7.8 HIGH CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H redhat
3.1 7.8 HIGH CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H vulnrichment
References

No references available.

Linked Vulnerabilities

{
  "advisories": [
    {
      "id": "DLA-2899-1",
      "source": "dla",
      "title": "policykit-1 security update",
      "url": "https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2022/01/msg00026.html"
    },
    {
      "id": "DSA-5059-1",
      "source": "dsa",
      "title": "policykit-1 security update",
      "url": "https://lists.debian.org/debian-security-announce/2022/msg00024.html"
    },
    {
      "id": "USN-5252-1",
      "source": "usn",
      "title": "PolicyKit vulnerability",
      "url": "https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-5252-1"
    },
    {
      "id": "USN-5252-2",
      "source": "usn",
      "title": "PolicyKit vulnerability",
      "url": "https://ubuntu.com/security/notices/USN-5252-2"
    }
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  "cve": "CVE-2021-4034",
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    "dueDate": "2022-07-18T00:00:00+00:00"
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Enrichment data
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