CVE intelligence and bounded remediation
CVE-2019-16913 — Pcprotect Antivirus security vulnerability
PC Protect Antivirus v4.14.31 installs by default to %PROGRAMFILES(X86)%\PCProtect with very weak folder permissions, granting any user full permission "Everyone: (F)" to the contents of the directory and its subfolders. In addition, the program installs a service called SecurityService that runs as LocalSystem. This allows any user to escalate privileges to "NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM" by substituting the service's binary with a Trojan horse.
- Severity
- High
- CVSS
- 7.8 (3.1)
- Published
- 2019-10-07
- CISA KEV
- Not currently listed
- Ecosystem
- software/application
- Weaknesses
- CWE-276
Affected products
- pcprotect / antivirus / 4.14.31
Matched remediation archetype
Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management
This catalog composition supplies bounded fallback guidance. Explicitly reviewed curated workflows load with the complete record below.
Check exposure
- Map service accounts, operating-system identities, roles, capabilities, impersonation, set-user transitions, and administrative helper paths.
- Determine whether untrusted users or lower-privilege processes can reach the affected transition or modify inputs it trusts.
- Review file, socket, registry, device, job, container, and cloud-role permissions used before and after privilege changes.
Remediate safely
- Apply the supported fix and redesign privileged operations as a minimal, authenticated, allowlisted interface.
- Drop privileges before processing untrusted input, verify the drop succeeds, and remove unnecessary roles, capabilities, and write permissions.
- Validate ownership and permissions at time of use and add explicit lower-to-higher privilege boundary tests.
Authoritative sources
Complete CVE record and remediation plan
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