Vulnerabilities > CVE-2019-17093 - Untrusted Search Path vulnerability in multiple products

047910
CVSS 4.4 - MEDIUM
Attack vector
LOCAL
Attack complexity
MEDIUM
Privileges required
NONE
Confidentiality impact
PARTIAL
Integrity impact
PARTIAL
Availability impact
PARTIAL

Summary

An issue was discovered in Avast antivirus before 19.8 and AVG antivirus before 19.8. A DLL Preloading vulnerability allows an attacker to implant %WINDIR%\system32\wbemcomn.dll, which is loaded into a protected-light process (PPL) and might bypass some of the self-defense mechanisms. This affects all components that use WMI, e.g., AVGSvc.exe 19.6.4546.0 and TuneupSmartScan.dll 19.1.884.0.

Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)

Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)

  • Leveraging/Manipulating Configuration File Search Paths
    This attack loads a malicious resource into a program's standard path used to bootstrap and/or provide contextual information for a program like a path variable or classpath. J2EE applications and other component based applications that are built from multiple binaries can have very long list of dependencies to execute. If one of these libraries and/or references is controllable by the attacker then application controls can be circumvented by the attacker. A standard UNIX path looks similar to this If the attacker modifies the path variable to point to a locale that includes malicious resources then the user unwittingly can execute commands on the attackers' behalf: This is a form of usurping control of the program and the attack can be done on the classpath, database resources, or any other resources built from compound parts. At runtime detection and blocking of this attack is nearly impossible, because the configuration allows execution.