USN-1117-1: PolicyKit vulnerability

Releases

• Ubuntu 10.10
• Ubuntu 10.04
• Ubuntu 9.10

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.

Update instructions

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

Ubuntu 9.10

• libpolkit-backend-1-0 - 0.94-1ubuntu1.1

Ubuntu 10.10

• libpolkit-backend-1-0 - 0.96-2ubuntu1.1

Ubuntu 10.04

• libpolkit-backend-1-0 - 0.96-2ubuntu0.1

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

References

• CVE-2011-1485