- Description
- PackageKit is a a D-Bus abstraction layer that allows the user to manage packages in a secure way using a cross-distro, cross-architecture API. PackageKit between and including versions 1.0.2 and 1.3.4 is vulnerable to a time-of-check time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition on transaction flags that allows unprivileged users to install packages as root and thus leads to a local privilege escalation. This is patched in version 1.3.5. A local unprivileged user can install arbitrary RPM packages as root, including executing RPM scriptlets, without authentication. The vulnerability is a TOCTOU race condition on `transaction->cached_transaction_flags` combined with a silent state-machine guard that discards illegal backward transitions while leaving corrupted flags in place. Three bugs exist in `src/pk-transaction.c`: 1. Unconditional flag overwrite (line 4036): `InstallFiles()` writes caller-supplied flags to `transaction->cached_transaction_flags` without checking whether the transaction has already been authorized/started. A second call blindly overwrites the flags even while the transaction is RUNNING. 2. Silent state-transition rejection (lines 873–882): `pk_transaction_set_state()` silently discards backward state transitions (e.g. `RUNNING` → `WAITING_FOR_AUTH`) but the flag overwrite at step 1 already happened. The transaction continues running with corrupted flags. 3. Late flag read at execution time (lines 2273–2277): The scheduler's idle callback reads cached_transaction_flags at dispatch time, not at authorization time. If flags were overwritten between authorization and execution, the backend sees the attacker's flags.
- Source
- security-advisories@github.com
- NVD status
- Modified
- Products
- packagekit
CVSS 3.1
- Type
- Secondary
- Base score
- 8.8
- Impact score
- 6
- Exploitability score
- 2
- Vector string
- CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Severity
- HIGH
- Hype score
- Not currently trending
[
{
"nodes": [
{
"cpeMatch": [
{
"criteria": "cpe:2.3:a:packagekit_project:packagekit:*:*:*:*:*:*:*:*",
"matchCriteriaId": "533CCCB1-C825-4DE0-8A4C-1947F07D8E62",
"versionEndExcluding": "1.3.5",
"versionStartIncluding": "1.0.2",
"vulnerable": true
}
],
"negate": false,
"operator": "OR"
}
]
}
]