CVE-2019-18988

HIGH

CVSS Score

Published: February 7, 2020 at 03:09 PM UTC

Updated: June 17, 2026 at 02:25 AM UTC

1 product affected across 1 vendorTeamViewer

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Severity

HIGH7

Exploitation

CISA KEV

Exploit prediction

EPSS 5%

SSVC

Active

Actively Exploited

CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) Catalog

EPSS Score4.7%

EPSS (Exploit Prediction Scoring System) estimates a 4.7% chance this CVE is exploited in the wild within the next 30 days — higher than 92% of all CVEs. It complements CVSS: a high EPSS on a mid-severity CVE can still be urgent.

TeamViewer Desktop allows for bypass of remote-login access control because the same AES key is used for different customers' installations. If an attacker were to know this key, they could decrypt protected information stored in registry or configuration files or decryption of the Unattended Access password to the system (which allows for remote login to the system).

Required Action

Apply updates per vendor instructions.

Ransomware Use

Unknown

Added to KEV

Nov 3, 2021

Remediation Due

May 3, 2022

1637 days overdue

Notes

https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2019-18988

Description

TeamViewer Desktop through 14.7.1965 allows a bypass of remote-login access control because the same key is used for different customers' installations. It used a shared AES key for all installations since at least as far back as v7.0.43148, and used it for at least OptionsPasswordAES in the current version of the product. If an attacker were to know this key, they could decrypt protect information stored in the registry or configuration files of TeamViewer. With versions before v9.x , this allowed for attackers to decrypt the Unattended Access password to the system (which allows for remote login to the system as well as headless file browsing). The latest version still uses the same key for OptionPasswordAES but appears to have changed how the Unattended Access password is stored. While in most cases an attacker requires an existing session on a system, if the registry/configuration keys were stored off of the machine (such as in a file share or online), an attacker could then decrypt the required password to login to the system.