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Polkit, formerly known as PolicyKit, is a systemd SUID-root program. It's installed by default in every major Linux distribution.

[...] This vulnerability is easy to exploit. And, with it, any ordinary user can gain full root privileges on a vulnerable computer by exploiting this vulnerability in its default configuration. As Qualys wrote in its brief description of the problem: "This vulnerability is an attacker's dream come true."

[...] Why is it so bad? Let us count the ways:

Pkexec is installed by default on all major Linux distributions.
Qualys has exploited Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, and CentOS in their tests, and they're sure other distributions are also exploitable.
Pkexec has been vulnerable since its creation in May 2009 (commit c8c3d83, "Add a pkexec(1) command").
An unprivileged local user can exploit this vulnerability to get full root privileges.
Although this vulnerability is technically a memory corruption, it is exploitable instantly and reliably in an architecture-independent way.
And, last but not least, it's exploitable even if the polkit daemon itself is not running.

[...] While we know Linux can be attacked, Solaris and other Unix systems may also be vulnerable. We do know, however, that OpenBSD can't be attacked by exploits using this vulnerability.

Red Hat rates the PwnKit as having a Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS) score of 7.8. This is high.

When used correctly, Polkit provides an organized way for non-privileged processes to communicate with privileged processes. It is also possible to use polkit to execute commands with elevated privileges using the command pkexec followed by the command intended to be executed with root permission.

Title		Major Linux PolicyKit Security Vulnerability Uncovered: Pwnkit
Date		Thursday January 27 2022, @04:34AM
Author		martyb
Topic
from the dept.

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