Description of problem: src/polkitagent/polkitagenttextlistener.c is not big endian safe and *probably* hang when trying to get authentication on the console (e.g. over ssh). See the fix here: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1255079#c10 I copied the original PackageKit code from PolicyKit and I'm in the middle of the PackageKit fix so we figured we should let you know :)
Thanks for your report. What exactly is the affected code in polkit? Looking at polkit-0.96 (RHEL 6), 0.112 (RHEL 7), 0.113 (Fedora), none of them use > g_string_append_len (str, (const gchar *) &c, 1); The most directly corresponding code (with a getc() loop) uses g_string_append_c(), and looking at git history, it has been doing so from the first version of that code.
The full diagnostic is https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1255079#c10 -- the fix is trivial to copy and here: https://github.com/hughsie/PackageKit/commit/710a9445777793e49160587882860cbb7b43e311
After evaluating this issue, there are no plans to address it further or fix it in an upcoming release. Therefore, it is being closed. If plans change such that this issue will be fixed in an upcoming release, then the bug can be reopened.