Vulnerability record · CVE-2026-19816 · published 14 September 2026
CVE-2026-19816: Incorrect authorization vulnerability
A flaw was found in PackageKit. PackageKit skips the polkit authorization check for transactions carrying the SIMULATE (dry-run) flag. In the dnf5 backend, the RepoRemove handler ignores that contract and always executes the real transaction because its guard is written as (role == REPO_REMOVE || !SIMULATE), which is always true for RepoRemove. An unprivileged local user can therefore perform a genuine package uninstall while claiming to simulate. This vulnerability only affects systems using PackageKit with the dnf5 backend.
Description
A flaw was found in PackageKit. PackageKit skips the polkit authorization check for transactions carrying the SIMULATE (dry-run) flag. In the dnf5 backend, the RepoRemove handler ignores that contract and always executes the real transaction because its guard is written as (role == REPO_REMOVE || !SIMULATE), which is always true for RepoRemove. An unprivileged local user can therefore perform a genuine package uninstall while claiming to simulate. This vulnerability only affects systems using PackageKit with the dnf5 backend.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H
References
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2026-19816), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.