How severe is CVE-2021-3560?

CVE-2021-3560 has a CVSS 3.1 base score of 7.8 (HIGH). EPSS estimates a 23.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days. It is listed in the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.

CVE-2021-3560: Red Hat Polkit Incorrect Authorization

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities

Red Hat Polkit Incorrect Authorization Vulnerability is confirmed as actively exploited and is listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Added to KEV

2023-05-12

Remediation due

2023-06-02

Required action
Apply updates per vendor instructions.

CISA notes
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1961710; https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2021-3560

Description

It was found that polkit could be tricked into bypassing the credential checks for D-Bus requests, elevating the privileges of the requestor to the root user. This flaw could be used by an unprivileged local attacker to, for example, create a new local administrator. The highest threat from this vulnerability is to data confidentiality and integrity as well as system availability.

Severity

CVSS 3.1 · CISA7.8 HIGH

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

SSVC · CISA-ADP

Exploitationactive

Automatableno

Technical impacttotal

Affected Products

Vendor	Product	Affected versions
-	polkit	polkit 0.119

References

4 Links

Other references

Record Details

Published

2022-02-16

Last updated

2025-10-21

Assigner (CNA)

redhat

Credited to

Related Tool Categories

Tool categories that test for or protect against this vulnerability class.

CWE-863 · Incorrect Authorization

IAM Tools Application Security Tools

CVE record data © The MITRE Corporation, used under the CVE Terms of Use. Exploited-in-the-wild data from the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (CC0). Exploit prediction scores by FIRST EPSS (first.org/epss). This site is not endorsed or certified by MITRE, NVD, CISA, or FIRST.