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CVE-2018-10169: Protonmail Protonvpn: Privilege escalation
CVE-2018-10169 is rated critical with a CVSS v3.0 base score of 9.8 and affects Protonmail Protonvpn. Per its scoring, it can be exploited over the network, without authentication, without any user interaction. The scored impact on confidentiality, integrity and availability is the highest available.
Vulnerability description
ProtonVPN 1.3.3 for Windows suffers from a SYSTEM privilege escalation vulnerability through the "ProtonVPN Service" service. This service establishes an NetNamedPipe endpoint that allows arbitrary installed applications to connect and call publicly exposed methods. The "Connect" method accepts a class instance argument that provides attacker control of the OpenVPN command line. An attacker can specify a dynamic library plugin that should run for every new VPN connection. This plugin will execute code in the context of the SYSTEM user.
Severity breakdown
CVSS v3.0 9.8: CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- Attack vector: Network. Exploitable remotely over the network, with no need for local or physical access.
- Attack complexity: Low. No special conditions; the attack can be repeated reliably.
- Privileges required: None. No account or prior access is needed.
- User interaction: None. No action from any user is needed.
- Scope: Unchanged. Impact stays within the vulnerable component.
- Confidentiality impact: High. Total loss of confidentiality; sensitive data can be fully disclosed.
- Integrity impact: High. Total loss of integrity; data or system state can be fully modified.
- Availability impact: High. Total loss of availability; the component can be shut down.
Underlying weakness
CWE-732: Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
The product specifies permissions for a security-critical resource in a way that allows that resource to be read or modified by unintended actors.
Affected products
- Protonmail Protonvpn: 1.3.3