Avast sandbox privilege escalation via unpreserved DACLs on virtualized files in aswSnx.sys
41Vexday Risk Score
No sign of exploitation. It has a public proof of concept.
ssvc Attendcvss 8.8epss 0.1%
exploitation probability
0.1%top 97% of all CVEs
observed exploitation
nono source reports it
1 public exploit(s)
Improper preservation of permissions in the Avast sandbox minifilter driver (aswSnx.sys) on Windows allows a local, low-privileged attacker executing inside the sandbox to escape file isolation and escalate to SYSTEM.
When the sandbox virtualizes a file it copies the original security descriptor, but the driver opened the virtualization target object with GENERIC_WRITE and FILE_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES only, omitting WRITE_DAC. Every attempt to apply the original DACL therefore failed, and the failure was discarded silently, leaving virtualized copies of sensitive files with permissive permissions. Because the IRP_MJ_CREATE callback additionally did not strip WRITE_DAC for sensitive directories, a sandboxed process could rewrite the security descriptor of a virtualized object, read the virtualized copy of the SAM database, extract local NTLM password hashes and execute code as SYSTEM.
The absence of an IRP_MJ_SET_SECURITY callback in the driver's operation registration table is a related defense-in-depth gap, but it is not the control that prevents this attack.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
Affected products
Gen Digital · Avast Free Antivirus, Avast One, Avast Premium Security, Avast Ultimate, Avast Business SecurityGen Digital · AVG Antivirus Free, AVG Internet Security, AVG UltimateGen Digital · Norton Antivirus Plus, Norton 360 Standard, Norton 360 Deluxe, Norton 360 Advancedpublic PoCs found — 1
cve_referencegithub.com/MSNightmare/PrettyPragueunverified⚠ Public resources, to assess the exposure of systems you control or are authorized to test. Test only with authorization.
References
https://github.com/MSNightmare/PrettyPraguehttps://support.avast.com/en-us/article/Update-Antivirushttps://support.avg.com/SupportArticleView?l=en&urlname=Update-AVG-Antivirushttps://support.norton.com/sp/en/us/home/current/solutions/v20240108175512167https://www.gendigital.com/us/en/contact-us/security-advisories/https://x.com/msnightmare2000/status/2094106041046765752