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Fencer Intel
medium 6.9

CVE-2014-5033 json

KDE kdelibs before 4.14 and kauth before 5.1 does not properly use D-Bus for communication with a polkit authority, which allows local user…

published 2014-08-19 12 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2014-4932

cvss
6.9
version 2.0, NVD
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.4%
EPSS 0.4% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 29%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

KDE kdelibs before 4.14 and kauth before 5.1 does not properly use D-Bus for communication with a polkit authority, which allows local users to bypass intended access restrictions by leveraging a PolkitUnixProcess PolkitSubject race condition via a (1) setuid process or (2) pkexec process, related to CVE-2013-4288 and "PID reuse race conditions."

Patch / fix

  • kde4libs Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 4:4.13.2a-0ubuntu0.3

ubuntu advisories UBUNTU-CVE-2014-5033

Ubuntu security data © Canonical Ltd., from https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-security-notices via OSV; changed: normalised to fixed package versions per release. CC BY-SA 4.0

  • polkit-qt RHEL 7 0.103.0-10.el7_0

red hat advisories RHSA-2014:1359

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-2014-5033 updated cvss 6.9

polkit-qt: insecure calling of polkit

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (v. 7) polkit-qt 0.103.0-10.el7_0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client Optional (v. 7) polkit-qt-doc 0.103.0-10.el7_0, polkit-qt-devel 0.103.0-10.el7_0, polkit-qt-debuginfo 0.103.0-10.el7_0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode (v. 7) polkit-qt 0.103.0-10.el7_0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux ComputeNode Optional (v. 7) polkit-qt-doc 0.103.0-10.el7_0, polkit-qt-devel 0.103.0-10.el7_0, polkit-qt-debuginfo 0.103.0-10.el7_0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 7) polkit-qt 0.103.0-10.el7_0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server Optional (v. 7) polkit-qt 0.103.0-10.el7_0
    +2 more products
    Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v. 7) polkit-qt 0.103.0-10.el7_0 Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation Optional (v. 7) polkit-qt-doc 0.103.0-10.el7_0, polkit-qt-devel 0.103.0-10.el7_0, polkit-qt-debuginfo 0.103.0-10.el7_0
    fixed: vendor fix RHSA-2014:1359

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

Exploit prediction

0.36% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 29% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

Exploits and checks

  • quickgit.kde.org http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=kdelibs.git&a=commitdiff&h=e4e7b53b71e2659adaf52691d4accc3594203b23 referenced PoC, tagged "exploit" by a source, unverified

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.