Vulnerability · Published Sep 19, 2025 · Assigned by VulnCheck
CVE-2024-13990MicroWorld eScan AV Insecure Update Mechanism Allows Man-in-the-Middle Replacement of Updates
Critical 9.3
In plain English
A critical-severity improper certificate validation in eScan AV from MicroWorld Technologies. There are no confirmed reports of exploitation so far. The chance it is exploited in the next 30 days is estimated at 0.6% (higher than 50% of all known vulnerabilities).
Official description
MicroWorld eScan AV's update mechanism failed to ensure authenticity and integrity of updates: update packages were delivered and accepted without robust cryptographic verification. As a result, an on-path attacker could perform a man-in-the-middle (MitM) attack and substitute malicious update payloads for legitimate ones. The eScan AV client accepted these substituted packages and executed or loaded their components (including sideloaded DLLs and Java/installer payloads), enabling remote code execution on affected systems. MicroWorld eScan confirmed remediation of the update mechanism on 2023-07-31 but versioning details are unavailable. NOTE: MicroWorld eScan disputes the characterization in third-party reports, stating the issue relates to 2018–2019 and that controls were implemented then.
Affected products (as reported)
| Vendor | Product | Versions |
|---|---|---|
| MicroWorld Technologies | eScan AV | * |
Weakness: CWE-295, CWE-347 · Vector: CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N
References
- https://blog.avast.com/leading-the-charge-against-guptiminer technical-description
- https://www.gendigital.com/blog/insights/research/guptiminer-hijacking-antivirus-updates-for-distributing-backdoors-and-casual-mining technical-description, exploit
- https://securityaffairs.com/162228/breaking-news/escan-antivirus-mitm-attack.html media-coverage
- https://arstechnica.com/security/2024/04/hackers-infect-users-of-antivirus-service-that-delivered-updates-over-http/ technical-description
- https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/hackers-hijack-antivirus-updates-to-drop-guptiminer-malware/ media-coverage
- https://thehackernews.com/2024/04/escan-antivirus-update-mechanism.html media-coverage
- https://www.escanav.com/en/about-us/eScan-update-advisory.asp vendor-advisory, patch
- https://www.vulncheck.com/advisories/microworld-escan-av-insecure-update-mechanism-allows-mitm-replacement-of-updates third-party-advisory