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National Vulnerability Database

National Vulnerability Database

NVD

National Vulnerability Database
  1. Vulnerabilities

CVE-2026-41651 Detail

Description

PackageKit is a a D-Bus abstraction layer that allows the user to manage packages in a secure way using a cross-distro, cross-architecture API. PackageKit between and including versions 1.0.2 and 1.3.4 is vulnerable to a time-of-check time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition on transaction flags that allows unprivileged users to install packages as root and thus leads to a local privilege escalation. This is patched in version 1.3.5. A local unprivileged user can install arbitrary RPM packages as root, including executing RPM scriptlets, without authentication. The vulnerability is a TOCTOU race condition on `transaction->cached_transaction_flags` combined with a silent state-machine guard that discards illegal backward transitions while leaving corrupted flags in place. Three bugs exist in `src/pk-transaction.c`: 1. Unconditional flag overwrite (line 4036): `InstallFiles()` writes caller-supplied flags to `transaction->cached_transaction_flags` without checking whether the transaction has already been authorized/started. A second call blindly overwrites the flags even while the transaction is RUNNING. 2. Silent state-transition rejection (lines 873–882): `pk_transaction_set_state()` silently discards backward state transitions (e.g. `RUNNING` → `WAITING_FOR_AUTH`) but the flag overwrite at step 1 already happened. The transaction continues running with corrupted flags. 3. Late flag read at execution time (lines 2273–2277): The scheduler's idle callback reads cached_transaction_flags at dispatch time, not at authorization time. If flags were overwritten between authorization and execution, the backend sees the attacker's flags.


Metrics

 
NVD enrichment efforts reference publicly available information to associate vector strings. CVSS information contributed by other sources is also displayed.
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://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2026/04/22/6 CVE
https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/blob/04057883189efa225a7c785591aa87cb299782f8/src/pk-transaction.c#L2273-L2277 GitHub, Inc.
https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/blob/04057883189efa225a7c785591aa87cb299782f8/src/pk-transaction.c#L4036 GitHub, Inc.
https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/blob/04057883189efa225a7c785591aa87cb299782f8/src/pk-transaction.c#L873-L882 GitHub, Inc.
https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/security/advisories/GHSA-f55j-vvr9-69xv GitHub, Inc.
https://github.security.telekom.com/2026/04/pack2theroot-linux-local-privilege-escalation.html CISA-ADP, GitHub, Inc.

Weakness Enumeration

CWE-ID CWE Name Source
CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition GitHub, Inc.  

Change History

3 change records found show changes

Quick Info

CVE Dictionary Entry:
CVE-2026-41651
NVD Published Date:
04/22/2026
NVD Last Modified:
04/22/2026
Source:
GitHub, Inc.