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Known Exploited Vulnerabilities CVE-2021-4034 Mappings

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.

Mappings

Capability ID Capability Description Mapping Type ATT&CK ID ATT&CK Name Notes
CVE-2021-4034 Red Hat Polkit Out-of-Bounds Read and Write Vulnerability exploitation_technique T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation
Comments
The Polkit/Pwnkit vulnerability (CVE-2021-4034) is a critical vulnerability impacting every major Linux distribution. Its attack vector allows privilege escalation and can even give the attacker root access.
References
  1. https://www.crowdstrike.com/en-us/blog/hunting-pwnkit-local-privilege-escalation-in-linux/
  2. https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories/aa24-249a