CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2020-11552 — Zohocorp Manageengine Adselfservice Plus security vulnerability

Critical CVSS 9.8

An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in ManageEngine ADSelfService Plus before build 6003 because it does not properly enforce user privileges associated with a Certificate dialog. This vulnerability could allow an unauthenticated attacker to escalate privileges on a Windows host. An attacker does not require any privilege on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability. One option is the self-service option on the Windows login screen. Upon selecting this option, the thick-client software is launched, which connects to a remote ADSelfService Plus server to facilitate self-service operations. An unauthenticated attacker having physical access to the host could trigger a security alert by supplying a self-signed SSL certificate to the client. The View Certificate option from the security alert allows an attacker to export a displayed certificate to a file. This can further cascade to a dialog that can open Explorer as SYSTEM. By navigating from Explorer to \windows\system32, cmd.exe can be launched as a SYSTEM.

Severity
Critical
CVSS
9.8 (3.1)
Published
2020-08-11
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
windows/system
Weaknesses
CWE-269

Affected products

  • zohocorp / manageengine_adselfservice_plus
  • zohocorp / manageengine_adselfservice_plus / 6.0

Showing 2 representative product identities from 5 source matches. Confirm exact affected versions with the linked vendor and NVD evidence.

Matched remediation archetype

Privilege escalation and unsafe privilege management

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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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