CVE-2026-4897

Publication date 26 March 2026

Last updated 14 April 2026

Ubuntu priority

Cvss 3 Severity Score

Description

A flaw was found in polkit. A local user can exploit this by providing a specially crafted, excessively long input to the `polkit-agent-helper-1` setuid binary via standard input (stdin). This unbounded input can lead to an out-of-memory (OOM) condition, resulting in a Denial of Service (DoS) for the system.

Read the notes from the security team

Status

Show unmaintained releases

Package	Ubuntu Release	Status
policykit-1	25.10 questing	Fixed 126-2ubuntu0.1
	24.04 LTS noble	Fixed 124-2ubuntu1.24.04.3
	22.04 LTS jammy	Fixed 0.105-33ubuntu0.1
	20.04 LTS focal	Needs evaluation
	18.04 LTS bionic	Needs evaluation
	16.04 LTS xenial	Needs evaluation
	14.04 LTS trusty	Needs evaluation

Notes

mdeslaur

introduced in fix for CVE-2015-4625: https://github.com/polkit-org/polkit/commit/ea544ffc18405237ccd95d28d7f45afef49aca17 (0.113)

Patch details

For informational purposes only. We recommend not to cherry-pick updates. How can I get the fixes?

Package	Patch details
policykit-1	Upstream: 7e122c8

Severity score breakdown

Parameter	Value
Base score	5.5 · Medium
Attack vector	Local
Attack complexity	Low
Privileges required	Low
User interaction	None
Scope	Unchanged
Confidentiality	None
Integrity impact	None
Availability impact	High
Vector	CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H

References

Related Ubuntu Security Notices (USN)

USN-8173-1
polkit vulnerabilities
14 April 2026