CVE-2011-4945

Severity: medium (CVSS 6.9 v2.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.4% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2012-10-01 · updated 2026-06-16
Weakness: CWE-264

Description

PolicyKit 0.103 sets the AdminIdentities to "wheel" by default, which allows local users in the wheel group to gain root privileges without authentication.

Affected products

Michael Biebl Policykit: 0.103

References

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/PolicyKit/commit/?id=763faf434b445c20ae9529100d3ef5290976d0c9
http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/policykit-1/0.104-2/05_revert-admin-identities-unix-group-wheel.patch
http://secunia.com/advisories/48817
http://security.gentoo.org/glsa/glsa-201204-06.xml
http://www.mail-archive.com/polkit-devel%40lists.freedesktop.org/msg00327.html
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/03/28/1
http://www.openwall.com/lists/oss-security/2012/03/28/2
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=401513
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/policykit-1/0.103-1
http://cgit.freedesktop.org/PolicyKit/commit/?id=763faf434b445c20ae9529100d3ef5290976d0c9
http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/view/policykit-1/0.104-2/05_revert-admin-identities-unix-group-wheel.patch
http://secunia.com/advisories/48817

Get alerted when CVE-2011-4945 or the next vulnerability affects your stack