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Mallory
HighPublic exploit

Privilege Escalation in Deepin dde-api-proxy D-Bus Forwarding

IdentifiersCVE-2025-23222CWE-441

CVE-2025-23222 affects Deepin dde-api-proxy through 1.0.19. The proxy runs as a root-privileged system D-Bus service and forwards requests from arbitrary local users to legacy D-Bus methods implemented by backend services. The flaw is that dde-api-proxy performs forwarding without preserving or revalidating the original caller’s authorization context. As a result, backend D-Bus services receive proxied requests as if they originated from root rather than from the unprivileged local user. This breaks the trust boundary between the caller and the privileged service and exposes methods that should not be available to non-root users. Where Polkit authorization is involved, the backend may evaluate the request as coming from an administrative caller, leading to the same privilege-escalation outcome.

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ANALYST BRIEF

Impact, mitigation & remediation

What it means. What to do now. Patch path, mitigations, and the assume-compromise checklist.

Impact

What an attacker gets, and what they’ve been doing with it.

A local unprivileged user can invoke privileged D-Bus methods that are intended to be restricted to root or otherwise authorized administrators. This can result in privilege escalation to administrative or root-equivalent capabilities depending on the exposed backend methods. The provided example indicates that operations rejected when called directly by an unprivileged user can succeed when invoked through the legacy proxy path. In Polkit-mediated cases, authorization decisions may incorrectly treat the caller as admin because the backend sees the request as originating from root.

Mitigation

If you can’t patch tonight, do this now.

Until a fixed package is deployed, reduce exposure by disabling or removing dde-api-proxy where operationally feasible, especially on multi-user systems. Restrict local access to affected systems, audit which legacy D-Bus methods are reachable through the proxy, and harden backend services so they do not rely solely on the proxy’s root identity for authorization. Additional defense-in-depth measures include tightening D-Bus policy for the proxy-exposed interfaces and reviewing Polkit rules associated with affected backend services.

Remediation

Patch, then assume compromise.

Upgrade dde-api-proxy to a fixed version later than 1.0.19 if available from the vendor. The vulnerable design should be corrected so that proxied D-Bus requests do not cause backend services to trust the proxy’s root identity as the original caller. Remediation should include enforcing authorization checks in the proxy before forwarding privileged methods, propagating and validating the real caller identity where supported, and restricting or removing access to legacy proxied methods that expose privileged functionality to untrusted local users.
PUBLIC EXPLOITS

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VALID 0 / 0 TOTALView more in app

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Associated malware1

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