KAuth security issues

[Sebastian Krahmer <krahmer () suse de>]

I sent this to security () kde org last week and to some KDE
developers one more week ago. No response so far, so here we go.

regards,
Sebastian

--------8<--------------------

Hi

I sent this mail to the KAuth author a week ago. So far no reply, so
I am trying it here again.

When I looked at the KAuth framework it seems like it is using

PolkitQt1::UnixProcessSubject subject(pid)

(i.e. unix process subjects) for the polkit auth, which is always racy.
Please refer to:

CVE-2013-4288 polkit: unix-process subject for authorization is racy
CVE-2013-4311 libvirt: insecure calling of polkit via libgobject API
CVE-2013-4324 spice-gtk: use of insecure polkit libgobject-1 API
CVE-2013-4325 hplip: use of insecure polkit DBUS API
CVE-2013-4326 rtkit: use of insecure polkit DBUS API
CVE-2013-4327 systemd: use of insecure polkit DBUS API

which were using exactly this vulnerable way auf authenticating
via polkit.

The bug is semi-public:

https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=864716

A non-racy way would be to use system-bus subject for authentication.
(Yet I dont know how this fits in the KAuth API).
Nevertheless, there needs to be done something, as basically
the KAuth authentication is non-existing if using process subjects.

regards,
Sebastian

-- 

~ perl self.pl
~ $_='print"\$_=\47$_\47;eval"';eval
~ krahmer () suse de - SuSE Security Team

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 

~ perl self.pl
~ $_='print"\$_=\47$_\47;eval"';eval
~ krahmer () suse de - SuSE Security Team