The _checkPolkitPrivilege function in serviceHelper.py in Back In Time (aka backintime) 1.1.18 and earlier uses a deprecated polkit authori…

published 2017-04-06 9 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2017-16577

cvss: 8.1; version 3.0, NVD
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 1.1%; EPSS 1.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 65%
public exploits: 0; none known

The _checkPolkitPrivilege function in serviceHelper.py in Back In Time (aka backintime) 1.1.18 and earlier uses a deprecated polkit authorization method (unix-process) that is subject to a race condition (time of check, time of use). With this authorization method, the owner of a process requesting a polkit operation is checked by polkitd via /proc/<pid>/status, by which time the requesting process may have been replaced by a different process with the same PID that has different privileges then the original requester.

Patch / fix

distros 1 links 1

backintime Debian 14, Debian 13, Debian 12 1.1.12-2

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2017-7572

github.com/bit-team/backintime@7f208dc commit

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-2017-7572 updated 2025-11-21 cvss 7.4

backintime: Race condition in the checkPolkitPrivilege function

Red Hat All currently supported Red Hat products
not affected: vulnerable code not present

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

1.08% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 65% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
NVD	3.0	8.1	CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:H/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	2.0	9.3	AV:N/AC:M/Au:N/C:C/I:C/A:C

Classification

Weakness

CWE-362 Concurrent Execution using Shared Resource with Improper Synchronization

References

github.com /bit-team/backintime/commit/7f208dc547f569b689c888103e3b593a48cd1869
third-party-advisory

Sources

CVE List CVE-2017-7572
NVD CVE-2017-7572

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.

Summary