CVE-2016-5311

Severity: high (CVSS 7.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.7% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-01-09 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-427

Description

A Privilege Escalation vulnerability exists in Symantec Norton Antivirus, Norton AntiVirus with Backup, Norton Security, Norton Security with Backup, Norton Internet Security, Norton 360, Endpoint Protection Small Business Edition Cloud, and Endpoint Protection Cloud Client due to a DLL-preloading without path restrictions, which could let a local malicious user obtain system privileges.

Affected products

Symantec Endpoint Protection: before 22.8.0.50 — fixed in 22.8.0.50
Symantec Endpoint Protection Cloud: before 22.8.0.50 — fixed in 22.8.0.50
Symantec Norton 360: before 22.7 — fixed in 22.7
Symantec Norton Antivirus: before 22.7 — fixed in 22.7
Symantec Norton Antivirus With Backup: before 22.7 — fixed in 22.7
Symantec Corporation Norton Family Android App: before 22.7 — fixed in 22.7
Symantec Norton Internet Security: before 22.7 — fixed in 22.7
Symantec Corporation Norton Security: before 22.7 — fixed in 22.7
Symantec Norton Security With Backup: before 22.7 — fixed in 22.7

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Symantec Endpoint Protection 22.8.0.50; Symantec Endpoint Protection Cloud 22.8.0.50; Symantec Norton 360 22.7; Symantec Norton Antivirus 22.7; Symantec Norton Antivirus With Backup 22.7; Symantec Corporation Norton Family Android App 22.7; Symantec Norton Internet Security 22.7; Symantec Corporation Norton Security 22.7; Symantec Norton Security With Backup 22.7. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

Get alerted when CVE-2016-5311 or the next vulnerability affects your stack