Rapid7 Vulnerability & Exploit Database

Linux PolicyKit Race Condition Privilege Escalation

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Linux PolicyKit Race Condition Privilege Escalation

Disclosed
04/01/2011
Created
05/30/2018

Description

A race condition flaw was found in the PolicyKit pkexec utility and polkitd daemon. A local user could use this flaw to appear as a privileged user to pkexec, allowing them to execute arbitrary commands as root by running those commands with pkexec. Those vulnerable include RHEL6 prior to polkit-0.96-2.el6_0.1 and Ubuntu libpolkit-backend-1 prior to 0.96-2ubuntu1.1 (10.10) 0.96-2ubuntu0.1 (10.04 LTS) and 0.94-1ubuntu1.1 (9.10)

Author(s)

  • xi4oyu
  • 0a29406d9794e4f9b30b3c5d6702c708

Platform

Linux

Architectures

x86, x64

Development

Module Options

To display the available options, load the module within the Metasploit console and run the commands 'show options' or 'show advanced':

msf > use exploit/linux/local/pkexec
msf exploit(pkexec) > show targets
    ...targets...
msf exploit(pkexec) > set TARGET < target-id >
msf exploit(pkexec) > show options
    ...show and set options...
msf exploit(pkexec) > exploit

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