Vulnerability · Published Jan 6, 2021 · Assigned by mitre
CVE-2020-36167
Critical 9.3
In plain English
A critical-severity security flaw in the affected software. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.5% (higher than 42% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
An issue was discovered in the server in Veritas Backup Exec through 16.2, 20.6 before hotfix 298543, and 21.1 before hotfix 657517. On start-up, it loads the OpenSSL library from the Installation folder. This library in turn attempts to load the /usr/local/ssl/openssl.cnf configuration file, which may not exist. On Windows systems, this path could translate to <drive>:\usr\local\ssl\openssl.cnf. A low privileged user can create a :\usr\local\ssl\openssl.cnf configuration file to load a malicious OpenSSL engine, resulting in arbitrary code execution as SYSTEM when the service starts. This gives the attacker administrator access on the system, allowing the attacker (by default) to access all data, access all installed applications, etc. If the system is also an Active Directory domain controller, then this can affect the entire domain.
Affected products (as reported)
References
- VU#429301 third-party-advisory, x_refsource_CERT-VN
- https://www.veritas.com/content/support/en_US/security/VTS20-010 x_refsource_MISC