CVE-2018-1116

Severity: medium (CVSS 4.4 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 1.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2018-07-10 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-285

Description

A flaw was found in polkit before version 0.116. The implementation of the polkit_backend_interactive_authority_check_authorization function in polkitd allows to test for authentication and trigger authentication of unrelated processes owned by other users. This may result in a local DoS and information disclosure.

Affected products

Canonical Ubuntu Linux: 12.04
Debian Linux: 8.0
Polkit Project Polkit: before 0.115 — fixed in 0.115

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Polkit Project Polkit 0.115. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-1116
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/polkit/commit/?id=bc7ffad5364
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/07/msg00042.html
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201908-14
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3717-2/
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=CVE-2018-1116
https://cgit.freedesktop.org/polkit/commit/?id=bc7ffad5364
https://lists.debian.org/debian-lts-announce/2018/07/msg00042.html
https://security.gentoo.org/glsa/201908-14
https://usn.ubuntu.com/3717-2/

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