Security News > 2020 > February > Another Flaw in Dell SupportAssist Allows Code Execution With Elevated Privileges
A researcher has discovered another DLL hijacking vulnerability in Dell SupportAssist that can be used to execute code with elevated privileges, and exploitation only requires low permissions.
In an advisory published last week, Dell revealed that Dell SupportAssist for both business and home PCs is affected by an uncontrolled search path vulnerability that allows a local user with low privileges to execute arbitrary code with elevated permissions by getting the SupportAssist binaries to load arbitrary DLLs. The flaw, tracked as CVE-2020-5316 and classified as high severity, has been patched by Dell with the release of SupportAssist for business PCs version 2.1.4 and SupportAssist for home PCs version 3.4.1.
Several privilege escalation vulnerabilities have been found in Dell SupportAssist in the past few years, but flaws that involve DLL hijacking may require elevated privileges for exploitation and major software vendors often say they pose a low risk.
In the case of CVE-2020-5316 Shimony discovered that Dell SupportAssist attempts to load a DLL from a folder where even a user with non-admin privileges can copy files.
"Therefore, a malicious non-privileged user can write a DLL that would be loaded by Dell SupportAssist, effectively gaining code execution inside software that runs with NT AUTHORITYSystem privileges," Shimony explained.
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Related Vulnerability
| DATE | CVE | VULNERABILITY TITLE | RISK |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-07-22 | CVE-2020-5316 | Uncontrolled Search Path Element vulnerability in Dell products Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs versions 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.1, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3 and Dell SupportAssist for Home PCs version 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.1, 2.1.1, 2.1.2, 2.1.3, 2.2, 2.2.1, 2.2.2, 2.2.3, 3.0, 3.0.1, 3.0.2, 3.1, 3.2, 3.2.1, 3.2.2, 3.3, 3.3.1, 3.3.2, 3.3.3, 3.4 contain an uncontrolled search path vulnerability. | 7.8 |