Elevation of Privelage via symlinked file in Avast Antivirus
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A sym-linked file accessed via the repair function in Avast Antivirus <24.2 on Windows may allow user to elevate privilege to delete arbitrary files or run processes as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. The vulnerability exists within the "Repair" (settings -> troubleshooting -> repair) feature, which attempts to delete a file in the current user's AppData directory as NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM. A low-privileged user can make a pseudo-symlink and a junction folder and point to a file on the system. This can provide a low-privileged user an Elevation of Privilege to win a race-condition which will re-create the system files and make Windows callback to a specially-crafted file which could be used to launch a privileged shell instance. This issue affects Avast Antivirus prior to 24.2.
Our own answer: ranges merged, affected separated from platform-only, with confidence and review flags.
The affected product only carries this flaw when running on these platforms. The platforms themselves are not vulnerable.
No remediation guidance has been written for this CVE yet, and no fixed version or vendor advisory is recorded against it.
SSVC signals action urgency (what to patch first), separate from CVSS which measures severity.
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