What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-2049: Cortex XDR Agent: Improper control of loaded DLL leads to local privilege escalation

• Severity: high (CVSS 7.2 v2.0)
• Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
• EPSS: 0.3% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
• Public exploit or detection template: none known
• Published: 2020-12-09 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-427

Description

A local privilege escalation vulnerability exists in Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR Agent on the Windows platform that allows an authenticated local Windows user to execute programs with SYSTEM privileges. This requires the user to have the privilege to create files in the Windows root directory. This issue impacts: All versions of Cortex XDR Agent 7.1 with content update 149 and earlier versions; All versions of Cortex XDR Agent 7.2 with content update 149 and earlier versions.

Affected products

• Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR Agent: from 7.1.1 through 7.1.3; from 7.2.1 through 7.2.2; 7.1, 7.1-content_update149, 7.2, 7.2-content_update149
• Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR Agent: 7.1.* without content update 150, 7.2.* without content update 150

References

• https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2020-2049
• https://security.paloaltonetworks.com/CVE-2020-2049

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