QID 353118

Date Published: 2022-02-01

QID 353118: Amazon Linux Security Advisory for polkit : ALAS2-2022-1745 (PwnKit)

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. (
( CVE-2021-4034)



Note: The preceding description block is extracted directly from the security advisory. Using automation, we have attempted to clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to a securitybreach or could affect integrity, availability, and confidentiality.

  • CVSS V3 rated as High - 7.8 severity.
  • CVSS V2 rated as High - 7.2 severity.
    • Solution
    Please refer to Amazon advisory: ALAS2-2022-1745 for affected packages and patching details, or update with your package manager.
    Vendor References

    CVEs related to QID 353118

    CVE-2021-4034 |
    Software Advisories
    Advisory ID Software Component Link
    ALAS2-2022-1745 Amazon Linux 2 URL Logo alas.aws.amazon.com/AL2/ALAS-2022-1745.html
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