CVE-2021-3560

Red Hat Polkit: Incorrect Authorization

As of , CVE-2021-3560 in Red Hat Polkit is on CISA's list of exploited vulnerabilities: CISA listed it on . Our patch-first group: Patch this week.

Exploited
Yes: CISA listed it on 12 May 2023
US federal deadline
2 June 202321 days after CISA listed it. US federal civilian agencies must fix it by then.
Used in ransomware campaigns
Not known to CISA
EPSS score
0.24Higher than 97% of the CVEs EPSS scores. EPSS estimates the chance of exploitation activity in the next 30 days.
EPSS when listed
0.00 on 12 May 2023EPSS on the day CISA listed it.
Public exploit
1 Metasploit module and 1 Exploit-DB entry (1 verified)
Fix
Vendor advice: bugzilla.redhat.comLinks below, from CISA's entry.

What CISA says to do

Apply updates per vendor instructions.

CISA's required action

What the flaw is

Red Hat Polkit contains an incorrect authorization vulnerability through the bypassing of credential checks for D-Bus requests, allowing for privilege escalation.

CISA's description

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.

The CVE record's description, from redhat

CVE published
16 February 2022
Assigned by
redhat
CVSS
7.8 High (CVSS 3.1, from CISA-ADP)
CWE-863
Incorrect Authorization
CISA SSVC, exploitation
active
CISA SSVC, automatable
no
CISA SSVC, technical impact
total

Timeline

  1. Exploit-DB published an exploit (EDB-ID 50011).
  2. The CVE record was published.
  3. CISA added it to its list of exploited vulnerabilities.
  4. The US federal deadline to fix it.

Public exploits

Facts from Metasploit's module list and Exploit-DB's index; we never copy exploit code.

Polkit: other exploited entries

VulnerabilityProductOur groupListedDeadlineEPSS
CVE-2021-4034Out-of-Bounds Read and WriteRed Hat PolkitPatch this weekRansomware use; Metasploit module; EPSS 0.940.94

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