CVE-2026-82964

HIGH
Published Sep 16, 2026 Modified Sep 16, 2026 CWE-281 CWE-653 CWE-862

Description

Improper preservation of permissions in the Avast sandbox minifilter driver (aswSnx.sys) on Windows allows a local, low-privileged attacker executing inside the sandbox to escape file isolation and escalate to SYSTEM. When the sandbox virtualizes a file it copies the original security descriptor, but the driver opened the virtualization target object with GENERIC_WRITE and FILE_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES only, omitting WRITE_DAC. Every attempt to apply the original DACL therefore failed, and the failure was discarded silently, leaving virtualized copies of sensitive files with permissive permissions. Because the IRP_MJ_CREATE callback additionally did not strip WRITE_DAC for sensitive directories, a sandboxed process could rewrite the security descriptor of a virtualized object, read the virtualized copy of the SAM database, extract local NTLM password hashes and execute code as SYSTEM. The absence of an IRP_MJ_SET_SECURITY callback in the driver's operation registration table is a related defense-in-depth gap, but it is not the control that prevents this attack.

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CVSS v3.1 Score

8.8
HIGH
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H

Weakness Type (CWE)

CWE-281 CWE-281
CWE-653 CWE-653
CWE-862 Missing Authorization

References

Frequently Asked Questions

What is CVE-2026-82964? +
Improper preservation of permissions in the Avast sandbox minifilter driver (aswSnx.sys) on Windows allows a local, low-privileged attacker executing inside the sandbox to escape file isolation and escalate to SYSTEM. When the sandbox virtualizes a file it copies the original security descriptor, but the driver opened the virtualization target object with GENERIC_WRITE and FILE_WRITE_ATTRIBUTES only, omitting WRITE_DAC. Every attempt to apply the original DACL therefore failed, and the failure was discarded silently, leaving virtualized copies of sensitive files with permissive permissions. Because the IRP_MJ_CREATE callback additionally did not strip WRITE_DAC for sensitive directories, a sandboxed process could rewrite the security descriptor of a virtualized object, read the virtualized copy of the SAM database, extract local NTLM password hashes and execute code as SYSTEM. The absence of an IRP_MJ_SET_SECURITY callback in the driver's operation registration table is a related defense-in-depth gap, but it is not the control that prevents this attack. It has a CVSS v3.1 base score of 8.8 (HIGH).
How severe is CVE-2026-82964? +
CVE-2026-82964 has a CVSS v3.1 score of 8.8 out of 10, rated HIGH. This is a high-severity vulnerability that should be prioritized for patching.
How do I check if I'm vulnerable to CVE-2026-82964? +
You can use Secably's free Website Scanner to check your website for known vulnerabilities. For infrastructure scanning, use the Port Scanner to identify exposed services that may be affected. Check the vendor advisories linked above for specific patch and version information.

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