# CVE-2026-41651

> Vulnerability · severity: **HIGH** (CVSS 8.8).

## Description

PackageKit is a a D-Bus abstraction layer that allows the user to manage packages in a secure way using a cross-distro, cross-architecture API. PackageKit between and including versions 1.0.2 and 1.3.4 is vulnerable to a time-of-check time-of-use (TOCTOU) race condition on transaction flags that allows unprivileged users to install packages as root and thus leads to a local privilege escalation. This is patched in version 1.3.5.

A local unprivileged user can install arbitrary RPM packages as root, including executing RPM scriptlets, without authentication. The vulnerability is a TOCTOU race condition on `transaction->cached_transaction_flags`  combined with a silent state-machine guard that discards illegal backward transitions while leaving corrupted flags in place. Three bugs exist in `src/pk-transaction.c`:
1. Unconditional flag overwrite (line 4036): `InstallFiles()` writes caller-supplied flags to `transaction->cached_transaction_flags` without checking whether the transaction has already been  authorized/started. A second call blindly overwrites the flags even while the transaction is RUNNING.
2. Silent state-transition rejection (lines 873–882): `pk_transaction_set_state()` silently discards backward state transitions (e.g. `RUNNING` → `WAITING_FOR_AUTH`) but the flag overwrite at step 1 already happened. The transaction continues running with corrupted flags.
3. Late flag read at execution time (lines 2273–2277): The scheduler's idle callback reads cached_transaction_flags at dispatch time, not at authorization time. If flags were overwritten between authorization and execution, the backend sees the attacker's flags.

## Key facts

- **CVE ID:** CVE-2026-41651
- **Published:** 2026-04-22
- **CVSS severity:** HIGH
- **CVSS base score:** 8.8
- **CWE codes:** CWE-367

## Affected products

- `packagekit_project:packagekit`

## Primary sources

- NIST NVD: https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2026-41651

## Citation

> AI Analytics. CVE-2026-41651. Retrieved 2026-08-08 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/cve/CVE-2026-41651. Derived from NIST NVD. Licensed CC0.

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