CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2021-23887 — Mcafee Data Loss Prevention Endpoint security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

Privilege Escalation vulnerability in McAfee Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Endpoint for Windows prior to 11.6.100 allows a local, low privileged, attacker to write to arbitrary controlled kernel addresses. This is achieved by launching applications, suspending them, modifying the memory and restarting them when they are monitored by McAfee DLP through the hdlphook driver.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2021-04-15
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
windows/system
Weaknesses
CWE-269

Affected products

  • mcafee / data_loss_prevention_endpoint

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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