CVE-2020-8961

Severity: critical (CVSS 9.8 v3.1)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 2.0% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2020-04-09 · updated 2026-06-17

Description

An issue was discovered in Avira Free-Antivirus before 15.0.2004.1825. The Self-Protection feature does not prohibit a write operation from an external process. Thus, code injection can be used to turn off this feature. After that, one can construct an event that will modify a file at a specific location, and pass this event to the driver, thereby defeating the anti-virus functionality.

Affected products

AVIRA Antivirus Free Antivirus: before 15.0.2004.1825 — fixed in 15.0.2004.1825

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: AVIRA Antivirus Free Antivirus 15.0.2004.1825. Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://support.avira.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000109798-Avira-Antivirus-for-Windows
https://support.avira.com/hc/en-us/articles/360000109798-Avira-Antivirus-for-Windows

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