QID 355263

Date Published: 2023-05-29

QID 355263: Amazon Linux Security Advisory for polkit : ALAS2023-2023-026

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) there is a flaw in polkit which can allow an unprivileged user to cause polkit to crash, due to process file descriptor exhaustion.
The highest threat from this vulnerability is to availability.
Note: polkit process outage duration is tied to the failing process being reaped and a new one being spawned. (
( CVE-2021-4115)



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: ALAS2023-2023-026 for affected packages and patching details, or update with your package manager.
    Vendor References

    CVEs related to QID 355263

    CVE-2021-4034 | CVE-2021-4115 |
    Software Advisories
    Advisory ID Software Component Link
    ALAS2023-2023-026 amazon linux 2023 URL Logo alas.aws.amazon.com/AL2023/ALAS-2023-026.html
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