NetworkManager is a network link manager that attempts to keep a wired or wireless network connection active at all times. The ifcfg-rh NetworkManager plug-in is used in Red Hat Enterprise Linux distributions to read and write configuration information from the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-* files. An input sanitization flaw was found in the way the ifcfg-rh NetworkManager plug-in escaped network connection names containing special characters. If PolicyKit was configured to allow local, unprivileged users to create and save new network connections, they could create a connection with a specially-crafted name, leading to the escalation of their privileges. Note: By default, PolicyKit prevents unprivileged users from creating and saving network connections. Red Hat would like to thank Matt McCutchen for reporting this issue. Users of NetworkManager should upgrade to these updated packages, which contain a backported patch to correct this issue. Running instances of NetworkManager must be restarted for this update to take effect.