CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2018-14608 — Thomsonreuters Ultratax Cs security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.5

Thomson Reuters UltraTax CS 2017 on Windows has a password protection option; however, the level of protection might be inconsistent with some customers' expectations because the data is directly accessible in cleartext. Specifically, it stores customer data in unique directories (%install_path%\WinCSI\UT17DATA\client_ID\file_name.XX17) that can be bypassed without authentication by examining the strings of the .XX17 file. The strings stored in the .XX17 file contain each customer's: Full Name, Spouse's Name, Social Security Number, Date of Birth, Occupation, Home Address, Daytime Phone Number, Home Phone Number, Spouse's Address, Spouse's Daytime Phone Number, Spouse's Social Security Number, Spouse's Home Phone Number, Spouse's Occupation, Spouse's Date of Birth, and Spouse's Filing Status.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.5 (3.0)
Published
2018-07-26
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
windows/system
Weaknesses
CWE-311

Affected products

  • thomsonreuters / ultratax_cs / 2017

Matched remediation archetype

Cryptography, certificate, signature, and channel validation

This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.

Check exposure

  • Inventory affected algorithms, key uses, trust stores, certificate validation settings, random sources, and plaintext channels across clients and services.
  • Determine which secrets, identities, signatures, or data protections depend on the affected primitive or validation path.
  • Check debug, compatibility, fallback, and hostname or audience override settings in build and runtime configuration.

Remediate safely

  • Use a maintained platform cryptographic API with approved algorithms, modes, parameters, randomness, and full peer identity validation.
  • Remove insecure fallback and validation bypasses; separate keys by purpose and load them from managed secret storage.
  • Plan rotation or reissuance for affected keys, certificates, tokens, hashes, or ciphertext and document compatibility sequencing.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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