CVE-2026-19816
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.
- Published Sep 14, 2026
- CVSS 7.1 high
- 0.1% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days (EPSS)
- A fix is available