PoC Index

CVE-2021-4034

KEV RANSOMWAREHIGH 7.8EPSS 94.9%

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.

CVSS v3.1
7.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v3.1
7.8 HIGHCVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS v2.0
7.2 HIGHAV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C
EPSS
94.92% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, 100th percentile
CISA KEV
added 2022-06-27, used in ransomware campaigns
Published
2022-01-28
Updated
2026-08-15

Proof-of-concept exploits (223)

Metasploit modules (1)

ExploitDB entries (1)

Vulhub environments (1)

Exploit collections (1)

References

Related