Package: pkexec Status: install ok unpacked Priority: optional Section: admin Installed-Size: 61 Maintainer: Utopia Maintenance Team Architecture: amd64 Multi-Arch: foreign Source: policykit-1 Version: 126-2 Replaces: policykit-1 (<< 0.120-4~) Depends: polkitd (= 126-2), libc6 (>= 2.34), libglib2.0-0t64 (>= 2.36.0), libpam0g (>= 0.99.7.1), libpolkit-agent-1-0 (= 126-2), libpolkit-gobject-1-0 (= 126-2) Breaks: policykit-1 (<< 0.120-4~) Description: run commands as another user with polkit authorization polkit is an application-level toolkit for defining and handling the policy that allows unprivileged processes to speak to privileged processes. It was previously named PolicyKit. . pkexec is a setuid program to allow certain users to run commands as root or as a different user, similar to sudo. Unlike sudo, it carries out authentication and authorization by sending a request to polkit, so it uses desktop environments' familiar prompting mechanisms for authentication and uses polkit policies for authorization decisions. . By default, members of the 'sudo' Unix group can use pkexec to run any command after authenticating. The authorization rules can be changed by the local system administrator. . If this functionality is not required, removing the pkexec package will reduce security risk by removing a setuid program. Homepage: https://github.com/polkit-org/polkit/