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HIGH

Cortex XDR Agent: Improper Control of User-Controlled File Leads to Local Privilege Escalation

Published Jul 15, 2021

Description

A local privilege escalation (PE) vulnerability exists in the Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR agent on Windows platforms that enables an authenticated local Windows user to execute programs with SYSTEM privileges. Exploiting this vulnerability requires the user to have file creation privilege in the Windows root directory (such as C:\). This issue impacts: All versions of Cortex XDR agent 6.1 without content update 181 or a later version; All versions of Cortex XDR agent 7.2 without content update 181 or a later version; All versions of Cortex XDR agent 7.3 without content update 181 or a later version. Cortex XDR agent 5.0 versions are not impacted by this issue. Content updates are required to resolve this issue and are automatically applied for the agent.

Affected products

Remediation

Vendor solution

This issue is fixed in Cortex XDR agent 6.1, Cortex XDR agent 7.2, Cortex XDR agent 7.3, and all later Cortex XDR agent versions with content update 181 or later content updates.

Content updates are required to resolve this issue and are automatically applied for the agent.

Metrics

Weaknesses (1)

References (1)

Change history (0)

No recorded changes yet.

Sources
CVE.org / MITRE
Status PUBLISHED
Assigner palo_alto
Published Jul 15, 2021
Updated Sep 17, 2024
Reserved Jan 6, 2021
NVD
Status Modified
Modified Jun 17, 2026
Red Hat
Severity n/a
Public date n/a