🛡️ CVE-2021-4034 on Debian — policykit-1

⚪ Unknown ✅ No Known Exploit OSV

N/A

CVSS Score

0 Low4 Medium7 High9 Critical10

Description

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.

Distribution advisory

This page covers CVE-2021-4034 as tracked by Debian, for the package policykit-1. The fix is available in version 0.105-31.1; earlier versions remain affected.

How this vulnerability can be exploited

This issue can be reached with local access to the system, attack complexity is low, an attacker needs low-level privileges on the target. No user interaction is required. The scope is unchanged, so the impact stays within the vulnerable component. Rated impact: confidentiality high, integrity high, availability high.

Affected software

DEBIAN-CVE-2021-4034 is recorded against 1 package.

policykit-1 (fixed in 0.105-31.1)

Timeline and source

Published on 28 January 2022 and last revised on 4 August 2026. No public exploit is currently recorded for this entry. Record sourced from OSV.

References

security-tracker.debian.org (Advisory)

CVE-2021-4034 on other distributions

Each distribution ships its own build and its own fixed version. Pick the one you run:

Ubuntu

Details

Severity Unknown

CVSS Score N/A

CVSS Vector CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

CWE N/A

Public Exploit ✅ No

Source OSV

Published 2022-01-28

Updated 2026-08-12

Modified 2026-08-04

Fix URL N/A

Affected Packages

Software	From version	Fixed in
policykit-1	—	0.105-31.1

References

ADVISORY https://security-tracker.debian.org/tracker/CVE-2021-4034

🔗 NVD 🔗 Mitre

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