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Fencer Intel
medium 6.9

CVE-2011-1485 json

Race condition in the pkexec utility and polkitd daemon in PolicyKit (aka polkit) 0.96 allows local users to gain privileges by executing a…

published 2011-05-31 15 y ago modified 2026-06-16 4 mo ago also EUVD-2011-1488

cvss
6.9
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
5.2%
EPSS 5.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 92%
public exploits
4
Metasploit, Exploit-DB

Summary

Race condition in the pkexec utility and polkitd daemon in PolicyKit (aka polkit) 0.96 allows local users to gain privileges by executing a setuid program from pkexec, related to the use of the effective user ID instead of the real user ID.

Patch / fix

  • policykit-1 Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 0.101-4

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2011-1485

  • polkit RHEL 6 0.96-2.el6_0.1
  • polkit-desktop-policy RHEL 6 0.96-2.el6_0.1

red hat advisories RHSA-2011:0455

Vendor advisories

What the vendors themselves say about their products: affected, fixed or not affected, and what to do.

red hat product security vex CVE-2011-1485 updated cvss 6.9

polkit: polkitd/pkexec vulnerability

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop (v. 6) polkit 0.96-2.el6_0.1, polkit-desktop-policy 0.96-2.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop Optional (v. 6) polkit 0.96-2.el6_0.1, polkit-desktop-policy 0.96-2.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node (v. 6) polkit 0.96-2.el6_0.1, polkit-desktop-policy 0.96-2.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux HPC Node Optional (v. 6) polkit 0.96-2.el6_0.1, polkit-desktop-policy 0.96-2.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6) polkit 0.96-2.el6_0.1, polkit-desktop-policy 0.96-2.el6_0.1 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 6) polkit 0.96-2.el6_0.1, polkit-desktop-policy 0.96-2.el6_0.1
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2011:0455

Red Hat CSAF VEX © Red Hat, Inc., from https://security.access.redhat.com/data/csaf/v2/vex/; changed: reduced to product statuses and remediations. CC BY 4.0 · csaf

Timeline

  1. First public exploit (Metasploit exploit/linux/local/pkexec)
  2. Published

Exploit prediction

5.25% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 92% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • Metasploit exploit/linux/local/pkexec Linux PolicyKit Race Condition Privilege Escalation metasploit exploit, great rank, 2011-04-01
  • EDB-35021 Linux PolicyKit - Race Condition Privilege Escalation (Metasploit) local, 2014-10-20
  • EDB-17942 pkexec - Race Condition Privilege Escalation local, 2011-10-08
  • EDB-17932 PolicyKit polkit-1 < 0.101 - Local Privilege Escalation local, 2011-10-05

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
NVD 2.0 6.9 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.