CVE-2020-1988 - CVE House

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Status published Medium CVE-2020-1988

Global Protect Agent: Local privilege escalation due to an unquoted search path vulnerability

4.2 CVSS

Vulnerability Description

An unquoted search path vulnerability in the Windows release of Global Protect Agent allows an authenticated local user with file creation privileges on the root of the OS disk (C:\) or to Program Files directory to gain system privileges. This issue affects Palo Alto Networks GlobalProtect Agent 5.0 versions before 5.0.5; 4.1 versions before 4.1.13 on Windows;

Impact Analysis

Refer to official advisory for detailed impact metrics.

Remediation

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

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Credits & Attribution

The following person or organization is credited with identifying this vulnerability, as recorded in the NVD database:

Palo Alto Networks thanks Ratnesh Pandey of Bromium and Matthew Batten for discovering and reporting this issue.

References

https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2020-1988

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Affected Vendor

Palo Alto Networks

View all reports →

Affected Software

Global Protect Agent

Vulnerable Versions:

5.0, 4.1

Timeline

Official Publish: April 8th, 2020

Last Modified: September 16th, 2024

Added to House: July 21st, 2026

CVSS Vectors

V3: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:L/I:L/A:L

Weaknesses (CWE)

MITRE ATT&CK TTPs

T1574 Hijack Execution Flow

Privilege Escalation

T1036 Masquerading

Defense Evasion

T1543 Create or Modify System Process

T1059 Command and Scripting Interpreter

T1569 System Services