CVE-2026-82964
Avast sandbox privilege escalation via unpreserved DACLs on virtualized files in aswSnx.sys
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.
CVSS Vector Breakdown
AV:LAttack VectorAC:LAttack ComplexityPR:LPrivileges RequiredUI:NUser InteractionS:CScopeC:HConfidentialityI:HIntegrityA:HAvailabilityWeaknesses
Affected Products
Exploitability
Attack Graph
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MITRE ATT&CK
3 techniquesReferences
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