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Fencer Vulns
high 7.3

CVE-2026-78422 json

zbus_polkit: polkit authorization bypass via PID reuse due to incorrect D-Bus type for the subject UID

published 2026-08-31 2 mo ago modified 2026-09-02 2 mo ago also RUSTSEC-2026-0278 , EUVD-2026-68593

cvss
7.3
version 4.0, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.1%
EPSS 0.1% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 2%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

Subject::new_for_owner() in the zbus_polkit crate encodes the uid entry of a unix-process polkit subject as an unsigned 32-bit integer (D-Bus type u), whereas the org.freedesktop.PolicyKit1.Authority interface specifies a signed 32-bit integer (D-Bus type i). Because of this type mismatch, polkit silently discards the caller-supplied UID and instead determines the subject's owner itself by looking up the PID in /proc, a lookup that is inherently subject to a time-of-check/time-of-use race.

Consequently, an application that passes a UID obtained from a trustworthy source — for example SO_PEERCRED Unix socket peer credentials — in order to defend against PID reuse receives no protection, and the supplied UID has no effect on the authorization decision. A local unprivileged attacker who can cause an authorized process to terminate and then win the race to have their own process assigned the same PID can be authorized under the identity of the terminated process, bypassing the polkit authorization check and performing actions the attacker is not entitled to.

This issue affects zbus_polkit before 5.1.0.

Patch / fix

  • crates.io zbus_polkit 5.1.0
  • z-galaxy zbus_polkit 5.1.0
  • rust-zbus-polkit Debian 14 5.1.0-1

debian advisories DEBIAN-CVE-2026-78422

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-2026-78422 updated cvss 7.0

zbus_polkit: zbus_polkit: Privilege escalation via PID reuse due to incorrect D-Bus type handling

  • 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

CISA SSVC

Exploitation
none
Automatable
no
Technical impact
total
Assessed
2 mo ago

Exploit prediction

0.13% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 2% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 4.0 7.3 CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
CNA 4.0 7.3 CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:P/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
crates.io zbus_polkit
>=0.0.0-0, <5.1.0
5.1.0

Affected products

  • z-galaxy zbus_polkit

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-686 Function Call With Incorrect Argument Type
  • CWE-367 Time-of-check Time-of-use (TOCTOU) Race Condition

References

Sources

Fencer Vulns 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.