Major Linux PolicyKit security vulnerability uncovered: Pwnkit

▤ Summary

This time security company Qualys has uncovered a truly dangerous memory corruption vulnerability in polkits pkexec, CVE-2021-4034. Also: This sneaky ransomware is now targeting Linux servers, too Its so dangerous because the program itself is so powerful; its a component for controlling system-wide privileges in Unix-like operating systems. This vulnerability, which has been hiding in plain sight for 12+ years, is a problem with how pkexec reads environmental variables. exists and contains an executable file named "value", then a pointer to the string "name=./value" is written out-of-bounds to envp[0]." But a sophisticated attacker can make a PwnKit assault without leaving any traces in the logs.

▦ Linked Companies

Canonical, Ltd.

$50M to $100M

The Fedora Project

$1M to $5M

OpenBSD

$10M to $25M

Qualys, Inc.

$500M to $1B

Oracle

$1B+

Red Hat

$1B+

Involver

$1B+

OpenShift

$1M to $5M