SYSTEM privilege escalation via MSI repair shell
Published Mar 29, 2023 · Updated Feb 18, 2025
Privilege escalation in QEMU Guest Agent allows local users to gain SYSTEM access through a crafted Windows MSI repair request. The RegisterCom and UnregisterCom repair actions run without administrator validation and invoke cmd.exe without impersonation, spawning an interactive shell as SYSTEM. A low-privileged account inside a Windows guest with virtio-win drivers and the guest agent installed is required; the flaw does not cross the VM boundary.
Summary
What happened
Privilege escalation in QEMU Guest Agent allows local users to gain SYSTEM access through a crafted Windows MSI repair request. The RegisterCom and UnregisterCom repair actions run without administrator validation and invoke cmd.exe without impersonation, spawning an interactive shell as SYSTEM. A low-privileged account inside a Windows guest with virtio-win drivers and the guest agent installed is required; the flaw does not cross the VM boundary.
The record
- CVE
- CVE-2023-0664
- Published
- Mar 29, 2023
- Updated
- Feb 18, 2025
- Vendor
- QEMU Project
- Product
- QEMU Guest Agent
- Classifications
- CWE-269, CWE-250, T1068
- Attack vector
- local
- Privileges
- authenticated
Timeline
How it unfolded
- Mar 29, 2023CVE publishedPublication date reported by the CVE source.
- Feb 18, 2025Record updatedLatest update available in the CVE record.
Exploitability
Present is not the same as exploitable
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Is a vulnerable build present?
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- Affected versionversion=unknown
What conditions does exploitation require?
What is affected?
Attacks
What attackers are doing with it
Daily unique IPs observed by Shadowserver honeypots for known exploited vulnerabilities (KEVs). Missing observations do not establish an absence of attacks.
Weakness, pattern, technique
Public exploit references
No public exploit references are available in this record.
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Technologies
Your stack
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Your stack
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