USN-1117-1: PolicyKit vulnerability

19 April 2011

Local users could gain root access by using the pkexec tool in PolicyKit.

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Releases

Packages

  • policykit-1 - framework for managing administrative policies and privileges

Details

Neel Mehta discovered that PolicyKit did not correctly verify the user
making authorization requests. A local attacker could exploit this to
trick pkexec into running applications with root privileges.

Reduce your security exposure

Ubuntu Pro provides ten-year security coverage to 25,000+ packages in Main and Universe repositories, and it is free for up to five machines.

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Update instructions

The problem can be corrected by updating your system to the following package versions:

Ubuntu 9.10
Ubuntu 10.10
Ubuntu 10.04

After a standard system update you need to reboot your computer to make
all the necessary changes.

References

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Further reading