exacqVision Enterprise System Manager (ESM) privilege escalation

Vulnerability Description

A vulnerability in the exacqVision Enterprise System Manager (ESM) v5.12.2 application whereby unauthorized privilege escalation can potentially be achieved. This vulnerability impacts exacqVision ESM v5.12.2 and all prior versions of ESM running on a Windows operating system. This issue does not impact any Windows Server OSs, or Linux deployments with permissions that are not inherited from the root directory. Authorized Users have ‘modify’ permission to the ESM folders, which allows a low privilege account to modify files located in these directories. An executable can be renamed and replaced by a malicious file that could connect back to a bad actor providing system level privileges. A low privileged user is not able to restart the service, but a restart of the system would trigger the execution of the malicious file. This issue affects: Exacq Technologies, Inc. exacqVision Enterprise System Manager (ESM) Version 5.12.2 and prior versions; This issue does not affect: Exacq Technologies, Inc. exacqVision Enterprise System Manager (ESM) 19.03 and above.

References

• https://ics-cert.us-cert.gov/advisories/ICSA-19-164-01
• https://packetstormsecurity.com/files/151691/exacqvisionesm5122-escalate.txt
• https://exacq.com/kb?crc=31399
• https://www.johnsoncontrols.com/-/media/jci/be/united-states/specialty-pages/product-security/files/cpp-psa-2019-01-v2-exacqvision-esm.pdf