What’s Vulnerable › Vulnerabilities

CVE-2020-7266: Privilege Escalation vulnerability through symbolic links in VSE for Windows

• Severity: high (CVSS 8.4 v3.1)
• 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: 2020-05-08 · updated 2026-06-17
• Weakness: CWE-274

Description

Privilege Escalation vulnerability in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise (VSE) for Windows prior to 8.8 Patch 14 Hotfix 116778 allows local users to delete files the user would otherwise not have access to via manipulating symbolic links to redirect a McAfee delete action to an unintended file. This is achieved through running a malicious script or program on the target machine.

Affected products

• Intel VirusScan Enterprise Linux (VSEL): from 1.9.0 before 1.9.2; from 2.0.0 before 2.0.3 — fixed in 1.9.2, 2.0.3

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Intel VirusScan Enterprise Linux (VSEL) 1.9.2, 2.0.3. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

• https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=SB10316
• https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=SB10316

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