KDE KAuth before 5.55 allows the passing of parameters with arbitrary types to helpers running as root over DBus via DBusHelperProxy.cpp. Certain types can cause crashes, and trigger the decoding of arbitrary images with dynamically loaded plugins. In other words, KAuth unintentionally causes this plugin code to run as root, which increases the severity of any possible exploitation of a plugin vulnerability.

The remote Ubuntu 16.04 ESM / 18.04 ESM host has packages installed that are affected by a vulnerability as referenced in the USN-6035-1 advisory.

    It was discovered that KAuth incorrectly handled some configuration parameters with specially crafted     arbitrary types. An attacker could possibly use this issue to cause a denial of service, or possibly     execute arbitrary code.

Tenable has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Ubuntu security advisory.

Note that Nessus has not tested for this issue but has instead relied only on the application's self-reported version number.

This update for kauth fixes the following issues :

Security issue fixed :

  - CVE-2019-7443: Fixed an insecure handling of arguments     in helpers by removing the support of passing gui     variants (bsc#1124863).

Backport security fix for CVE-2019-7443

Note that Tenable Network Security has extracted the preceding description block directly from the Fedora update system website.
Tenable has attempted to automatically clean and format it as much as possible without introducing additional issues.

Albert Astals Cid reports :

KAuth allows to pass parameters with arbitrary types to helpers running as root over DBus.

Certain types can cause crashes and trigger decoding arbitrary images with dynamically loaded plugin

ID	Name	Product	Family	Severity
174591	Ubuntu 16.04 ESM / 18.04 ESM : KAuth vulnerability (USN-6035-1)	Nessus	Ubuntu Local Security Checks	high
122443	openSUSE Security Update : kauth (openSUSE-2019-242)	Nessus	SuSE Local Security Checks	high
122286	Fedora 28 : kf5-kauth (2019-8e683d3810)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
122276	Fedora 29 : kf5-kauth (2019-19b1d53695)	Nessus	Fedora Local Security Checks	high
122086	FreeBSD : kf5-kauth -- Insecure handling of arguments in helpers (e8bcac84-2d5c-11e9-9a74-e0d55e2a8bf9)	Nessus	FreeBSD Local Security Checks	high

Detections

Analytics

CVE-2019-7443

high

Tenable Plugins

high

high

high

high

high