CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-3560 — Red Hat Polkit Incorrect Authorization Vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8 CISA KEV

It was found that polkit could be tricked into bypassing the credential checks for D-Bus requests, elevating the privileges of the requestor to the root user. This flaw could be used by an unprivileged local attacker to, for example, create a new local administrator. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2022-02-16
CISA KEV
Known exploited
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-863, CWE-754

Affected products

  • polkit_project / polkit
  • debian / debian_linux / 11.0
  • canonical / ubuntu_linux / 20.04
  • redhat / virtualization / 4.0
  • redhat / virtualization_host / 4.0
  • redhat / openshift_container_platform / 4.7

Matched remediation archetype

Authorization bypass, IDOR, and cross-tenant access

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Map object and action authorization checks across API, UI, batch, import/export, and background-job paths.
  • Identify tenant, ownership, role, and policy boundaries for affected resources and administrative operations.
  • Use synthetic fixtures to compare intended access matrices without accessing another user's real data.

Remediate safely

  • Enforce server-side authorization at each resource access and state transition using the authenticated principal and trusted tenant context.
  • Scope data queries by tenant and ownership; treat client-supplied identifiers, roles, and policy claims as untrusted.
  • Add deny-by-default policy tests for horizontal and vertical access across every affected transport.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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