Hotspot Shield VPN client software has a serious security vulnerability

A brand new vulnerability has been found in Hotspot Shield’s Windows VPN client that would permit for privilege escalation if exploited by an attacker.

The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2020-17365, is the results of improper listing permissions in variations 10.3.0 and earlier of the corporate’s VPN client for Windows.

An attacker might exploit this vulnerability to deprave system information by creating a specifically crafted symbolic hyperlink to a vital file on a consumer’s system and overwrite it with privileges of the applying.

Privilege escalation vulnerability

In a security replace web page on its website, Hotspot Shield’s mum or dad firm Pango defined that a vulnerability was initially reported within the VPN firm’s 10.0.1 Windows client.

The Hotspot Shield Service has system stage privileges and writes log information into the folder with native consumer permissions.  As a results of this, eradicating the folder and abusing NTFS junctions can permit an unprivileged consumer to put in writing to any file on the file system with SYSTEM privileges.

TechRadar Pro has reached out to each Hotspot Shield and Pango relating to this vulnerability however we have but to listen to again on the time of writing.

In the meantime although, all Hotspot Shield customers utilizing the VPN service on Windows ought to replace their software to the newest model to keep away from falling sufferer to any potential assaults. Version 10.6.0 of Hotspot Shield’s Windows client is presently out there to obtain on the corporate’s website and primarily based on the security advisory, this and another variations above 10.3.0 usually are not affected by this vulnerability.

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