CVE intelligence and bounded remediation

CVE-2023-27323 — Parallels Desktop Updater Time-Of-Check Time-Of-Use Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability

High CVSS 7.8

Parallels Desktop Updater Time-Of-Check Time-Of-Use Local Privilege Escalation Vulnerability. This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Parallels Desktop. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target host system in order to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the Updater service. By creating a symbolic link, an attacker can abuse the service to execute a file. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute arbitrary code in the context of root. . Was ZDI-CAN-18150.

Severity
High
CVSS
7.8 (3.0)
Published
2024-05-03
CISA KEV
Not currently listed
Ecosystem
software/application
Weaknesses
CWE-367

Affected products

  • parallels / parallels_desktop

Matched remediation archetype

Race condition, TOCTOU, and lifecycle synchronization

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

Check exposure

  • Map concurrent actors, shared state, lock boundaries, signals, callbacks, retries, and check-then-use sequences in the affected path.
  • Determine whether untrusted users can influence timing, object names, filesystem state, or repeated state transitions.
  • Identify clustered and multi-process behavior that repository-local tests may not represent.

Remediate safely

  • Make the sensitive state transition atomic or protect it with a consistently ordered synchronization primitive.
  • Perform authorization and invariant checks on the same authoritative object and transaction used for the operation.
  • Use unique private resources, safe ownership transfer, and idempotent operations; add deterministic concurrency regression tests.

Authoritative sources

Complete CVE record and remediation plan

The detailed catalog view below loads this exact record, its source evidence, and the full seven-phase agentic change plan.