CVE-2020-16853 - CVE House
Back to Database
Status published High CVE-2020-16853

OneDrive for Windows Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Vulnerability Description

<p>An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the OneDrive for Windows Desktop application improperly handles symbolic links. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could overwrite a targeted file with an elevated status.</p> <p>To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would first have to log on to the system. An attacker could then run a specially crafted application that could exploit the vulnerability and delete a targeted file with an elevated status.</p> <p>The update addresses this vulnerability by correcting where the OneDrive updater performs file writes while running with elevation.</p>

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

Ensure systems are updated to the latest vendor-supplied patch levels.

THREAT MONITOR

Am I Vulnerable?

Launch our assessment wizard to check if your infrastructure is exposed to • CVE-2020-16853

Credits & Attribution

No credits recorded in the NVD database.

References

More from Microsoft

View All →
CVE-2025-9611
Microsoft Playwright MCP Server < 0.0.40 DNS Rebinding via Missing Origin Header Validation
High 7.2
CVE-2025-9491
Microsoft Windows LNK File UI Misrepresentation Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
High 7
CVE-2025-7326
EOL ASP.NET Core Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
High 7
CVE-2025-65046
Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Spoofing Vulnerability
Low 3.1
CVE-2025-65041
Microsoft Partner Center Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
Critical 10

Affected Vendor

Affected Software

OneDrive for Windows
Vulnerable Versions:
0

Timeline

Official Publish: September 11th, 2020
Last Modified: August 4th, 2024
Added to House: July 21st, 2026

CVSS Vectors

V3: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:H/A:H/E:P/RL:O/RC:C

Weaknesses (CWE)

No CWE data available

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

No associated TTPs found for this vulnerability.