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National Vulnerability Database

National Vulnerability Database

NVD

National Vulnerability Database
  1. Vulnerabilities

CVE-2021-4034 Detail

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.


Metrics

 
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CVSS 4.0 Severity and Vector Strings:

NIST CVSS score
NIST: NVD
N/A
NVD assessment not yet provided.

References to Advisories, Solutions, and Tools

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URL Source(s) Tag(s)
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/166196/Polkit-pkexec-Local-Privilege-Escalation.html CVE, Inc., Red Hat Exploit  Third Party Advisory  VDB Entry 
http://packetstormsecurity.com/files/166200/Polkit-pkexec-Privilege-Escalation.html CVE, Inc., Red Hat Third Party Advisory  VDB Entry 
https://access.redhat.com/security/vulnerabilities/RHSB-2022-001 CVE, Inc., Red Hat Mitigation  Vendor Advisory 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2025869 CVE, Inc., Red Hat Issue Tracking  Patch 
https://cert-portal.siemens.com/productcert/pdf/ssa-330556.pdf CVE, Inc., Red Hat Third Party Advisory 
https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/polkit/polkit/-/commit/a2bf5c9c83b6ae46cbd5c779d3055bff81ded683 CVE, Inc., Red Hat Patch 
https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog?field_cve=CVE-2021-4034 CISA-ADP US Government Resource 
https://www.oracle.com/security-alerts/cpuapr2022.html CVE, Inc., Red Hat Patch  Third Party Advisory 
https://www.qualys.com/2022/01/25/cve-2021-4034/pwnkit.txt CVE, Inc., Red Hat Exploit  Mitigation  Third Party Advisory 
https://www.secpod.com/blog/local-privilege-escalation-vulnerability-in-major-linux-distributions-cve-2021-4034/ CVE, Inc., Red Hat Exploit  Third Party Advisory 
https://www.starwindsoftware.com/security/sw-20220818-0001/ CVE, Inc., Red Hat Third Party Advisory 
https://www.suse.com/support/kb/doc/?id=000020564 CVE, Inc., Red Hat Third Party Advisory 
https://www.vicarius.io/vsociety/posts/pwnkit-pkexec-lpe-cve-2021-4034 CVE Exploit  Third Party Advisory 

This CVE is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog

Reference CISA's BOD 22-01 and Known Exploited Vulnerabilities Catalog for further guidance and requirements.

Vulnerability Name Date Added Due Date Required Action
Red Hat Polkit Out-of-Bounds Read and Write Vulnerability 06/27/2022 07/18/2022 Apply updates per vendor instructions.

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-125 Out-of-bounds Read cwe source acceptance level NIST  
CWE-787 Out-of-bounds Write cwe source acceptance level NIST   Red Hat, Inc.  

Known Affected Software Configurations Switch to CPE 2.2

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Change History

1 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2021-4034
NVD Published Date:
01/28/2022
NVD Last Modified:
06/17/2026
Source:
Red Hat, Inc.