CVE-2020-17392

Severity: high (CVSS 8.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.5% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-08-25 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-822

Description

This vulnerability allows local attackers to escalate privileges on affected installations of Parallels Desktop 15.1.3-47255. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability. The specific flaw exists within the handler for HOST_IOCTL_SET_KERNEL_SYMBOLS in the prl_hypervisor kext. The issue results from the lack of proper validation of a user-supplied value prior to dereferencing it as a pointer. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to escalate privileges and execute code in the context of the kernel. Was ZDI-CAN-10519.

Affected products

Parallels Desktop: before 16.0.0 — fixed in 16.0.0

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Parallels Desktop 16.0.0. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

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