CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-1314 — Cloudflare Cloudflared security vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

A vulnerability has been discovered in cloudflared's installer (<= 2023.3.0) for Windows 32-bits devices that allows a local attacker with no administrative permissions to escalate their privileges on the affected device. This vulnerability exists because the MSI installer used by cloudflared relied on a world-writable directory. An attacker with local access to the device (without Administrator rights) can use symbolic links to trick the MSI installer into deleting files in locations that the attacker would otherwise have no access to. By creating a symlink from the world-writable directory to the target file, the attacker can manipulate the MSI installer's repair functionality to delete the target file during the repair process. Exploitation of this vulnerability could allow an attacker to delete important system files or replace them with malicious files, potentially leading to the affected device being compromised. The cloudflared client itself is not affected by this vulnerability, only the installer for 32-bit Windows devices.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.1)
Published
2023-03-21
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
windows/system
Weaknesses
CWE-59

Affected products

  • cloudflare / cloudflared

Matched remediation archetype

Path traversal, unsafe upload, and file handling

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

Check exposure

  • Trace untrusted filenames, archive entries, URLs, and path segments into read, write, include, extraction, and upload operations.
  • Identify filesystem roots, mount permissions, symbolic-link behavior, archive handling, and whether uploaded content is web-accessible or executable.
  • Review canonicalization and containment checks across supported operating systems and storage backends.

Remediate safely

  • Generate server-side storage identifiers and resolve paths beneath a fixed root using filesystem-aware containment checks.
  • Reject absolute, parent-relative, alternate-separator, device, link, and archive entries that escape the intended root.
  • Store uploads outside executable or served paths, validate type and size, and use private atomic temporary files.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

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