Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Vulnerabilities

ESET Patches High-Severity Vulnerability in Windows Applications

Antivirus firm ESET on Monday announced patches for a local privilege escalation vulnerability impacting its Windows clients.

Tracked as CVE-2021-37852 and reported to ESET by the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), the vulnerability is considered “high severity,” as it could allow an attacker to misuse the AMSI scanning feature.

Antivirus firm ESET on Monday announced patches for a local privilege escalation vulnerability impacting its Windows clients.

Tracked as CVE-2021-37852 and reported to ESET by the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), the vulnerability is considered “high severity,” as it could allow an attacker to misuse the AMSI scanning feature.

“An attacker who is able to get SeImpersonatePrivilege can misuse the AMSI scanning feature to elevate to NT AUTHORITYSYSTEM in some cases,” ESET explains in an advisory.

The cybersecurity firm also notes that, by default, the local Administrators group and the device’s Local Service accounts have access to SeImpersonatePrivilege. However, since these accounts are highly privileged, the impact of the bug is limited, ESET says.

The security error impacts multiple versions of ESET NOD32 Antivirus, Internet Security, Smart Security and Smart Security Premium, Endpoint Antivirus and Endpoint Security for Windows, Server Security and File Security for Windows Server, Server Security for Azure, Security for SharePoint Server, and Mail Security for IBM Domino and for Exchange Server.

[READ: SonicWall Patches Y2K22 Bug in Email Security, Firewall Products]

ESET released a series of patches for the vulnerability in December 2021, and then followed up with fixes for older versions of its Windows products in January 2022.

The company also notes that the vulnerability can be mitigated by heading to a product’s Advanced setup section and disabling the “Enable advanced scanning via AMSI” option. However, ESET recommends applying the workaround only if the upgrade to a patched product version is not possible.

“To the best of our knowledge, there are no existing exploits that take advantage of this vulnerability in the wild,” ESET also notes.

An advisory for CVE-2021-37852 has also been released by ZDI. ESET said it became aware of the flaw in November, but ZDI said the issue was reported to the vendor in June.

Related: Vendors Respond to Method for Disabling Their Antivirus Products via Safe Mode

Related: Antivirus Vendors Patch Bug First Discovered 10 Years Ago

Related: Researchers Turn Antivirus Software Into Destructive Tools

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Vulnerabilities

Apple has released updates for macOS, iOS and Safari and they all include a WebKit patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529.

Application Security

Drupal released updates that resolve four vulnerabilities in Drupal core and three plugins.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.

Cloud Security

VMware vRealize Log Insight vulnerability allows an unauthenticated attacker to take full control of a target system.

IoT Security

Lexmark warns of a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability impacting over 120 printer models, for which PoC code has been published.

Application Security

A CSRF vulnerability in the source control management (SCM) service Kudu could be exploited to achieve remote code execution in multiple Azure services.