CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2018-20735 — An issue was discovered in BMC PATROL Agent through 11.3.01

High CVSS 7.8

An issue was discovered in BMC PATROL Agent through 11.3.01. It was found that the PatrolCli application can allow for lateral movement and escalation of privilege inside a Windows Active Directory environment. It was found that by default the PatrolCli / PATROL Agent application only verifies if the password provided for the given username is correct; it does not verify the permissions of the user on the network. This means if you have PATROL Agent installed on a high value target (domain controller), you can use a low privileged domain user to authenticate with PatrolCli and then connect to the domain controller and run commands as SYSTEM. This means any user on a domain can escalate to domain admin through PATROL Agent. NOTE: the vendor disputes this because they believe it is adequate to prevent this escalation by means of a custom, non-default configuration

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.0)
Published
2019-01-17
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
windows/system
Weaknesses
CWE-287

Affected products

  • bmc / patrol_agent

Matched remediation archetype

Authentication bypass and missing authentication

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

Check exposure

  • Map every affected endpoint and protocol path, including alternate ports, legacy routes, recovery flows, service accounts, and machine-to-machine access.
  • Confirm which deployments enable the affected authentication mode and whether the interface is reachable from untrusted networks.
  • Review session, token, credential, and proxy trust configuration without attempting account takeover.

Remediate safely

  • Apply the supported fix and centralize fail-closed authentication before protected request handling.
  • Remove default or embedded credentials, rotate affected secrets and sessions, and bind authentication decisions to the intended audience and channel.
  • Add negative tests for alternate routes, malformed or absent credentials, recovery flows, and proxy-derived identity.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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