CVE-2026-19816

Name	CVE-2026-19816
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.
Source	CVE (at NVD; CERT, ENISA, LWN, oss-sec, fulldisc, Debian ELTS, Red Hat, Ubuntu, Gentoo, SUSE bugzilla/CVE, GitHub advisories/code/issues, web search, more)

Vulnerable and fixed packages

The table below lists information on source packages.

Source Package	Release	Version	Status
packagekit (PTS)	bookworm, bookworm (security)	1.2.6-5+deb12u1	vulnerable
	trixie (security), trixie	1.3.1-1+deb13u1	vulnerable
	forky, sid	1.4.0-1	fixed

The information below is based on the following data on fixed versions.

Package	Type	Release	Fixed Version	Urgency	Origin	Debian Bugs
packagekit	source	(unstable)	1.4.0-1	unimportant

Notes

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2515940
https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/security/advisories/GHSA-g5gf-h68q-gxc8
Fixed by: https://github.com/PackageKit/PackageKit/commit/33be77b3ecd3b566ca117358dc18c58c964e627b (v1.4.0)
Affects the 'dnf5' aka rpm backend, not the 'apt' one that we build and ship