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.

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Advisories
Source ID Title
Debian DLA Debian DLA DLA-2899-1 policykit-1 security update
Debian DSA Debian DSA DSA-5059-1 policykit-1 security update
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-5252-1 PolicyKit vulnerability
Ubuntu USN Ubuntu USN USN-5252-2 PolicyKit vulnerability
Fixes

Solution

No solution given by the vendor.


Workaround

No workaround given by the vendor.

History

Wed, 22 Oct 2025 00:30:00 +0000


Tue, 21 Oct 2025 20:30:00 +0000


Tue, 21 Oct 2025 19:30:00 +0000


Wed, 16 Jul 2025 13:45:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics epss

{'score': 0.8831}

epss

{'score': 0.88697}


Fri, 22 Nov 2024 12:00:00 +0000


Tue, 05 Nov 2024 20:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
CPEs cpe:2.3:a:starwindsoftware:starwind_hyperconverged_appliance:-:*:*:*:*:*:*:*
Vendors & Products Starwindsoftware starwind Hyperconverged Appliance

Mon, 04 Nov 2024 16:15:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
Metrics kev

{'dateAdded': '2022-06-27'}

ssvc

{'options': {'Automatable': 'no', 'Exploitation': 'active', 'Technical Impact': 'total'}, 'version': '2.0.3'}


Wed, 14 Aug 2024 01:00:00 +0000

Type Values Removed Values Added
References

Projects

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cve-icon MITRE

Status: PUBLISHED

Assigner: redhat

Published:

Updated: 2025-10-21T23:15:48.549Z

Reserved: 2021-11-29T00:00:00.000Z

Link: CVE-2021-4034

cve-icon Vulnrichment

Updated: 2024-09-23T18:05:54.355Z

cve-icon NVD

Status : Analyzed

Published: 2022-01-28T20:15:12.193

Modified: 2025-11-06T14:50:26.470

Link: CVE-2021-4034

cve-icon Redhat

Severity : Important

Publid Date: 2022-01-25T17:00:00Z

Links: CVE-2021-4034 - Bugzilla

cve-icon OpenCVE Enrichment

No data.

Weaknesses