CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2021-4034 — Red Hat Polkit Out-of-Bounds Read and Write Vulnerability
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.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2022-01-28
- CISA KEV
- Known exploited
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-787, CWE-125
Affected products
- polkit_project / polkit
- redhat / enterprise_linux_server_update_services_for_sap_solutions / 7.6
- redhat / enterprise_linux_server_update_services_for_sap_solutions / 7.7
- redhat / enterprise_linux / 8.0
- redhat / enterprise_linux_desktop / 7.0
- redhat / enterprise_linux_eus / 8.2
Showing 6 representative product identities from 54 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.
Matched remediation archetype
Buffer bounds, memory safety, and memory corruption
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Check exposure
- Identify affected native-code versions, build flags, architectures, parsers, codecs, drivers, and input paths in all shipped artifacts.
- Determine whether untrusted data reaches the affected routine and the process privilege, sandbox, and network exposure.
- Confirm statically linked, vendored, firmware, and platform-provided copies, not only package-manager records.
Remediate safely
- Apply the maintained upstream correction or replace the affected component, then rebuild every dependent artifact from clean inputs.
- Adopt bounds-checked interfaces, validated sizes and integer conversions, clear ownership, and memory-safe components where practical.
- Enable supported compiler and runtime hardening and add sanitized tests and fuzz regression seeds derived from non-weaponized fixtures.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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