CVE-2023-29080: Privilege escalation in InstallShield

Severity: high (CVSS 8.5 v4.0)
Exploited in the wild: not listed in CISA KEV
EPSS: 0.2% probability of exploitation in the next 30 days
Public exploit or detection template: none known
Published: 2025-01-30 · updated 2026-06-17
Weakness: CWE-552

Description

Potential privilege escalation vulnerability in Revenera InstallShield versions 2022 R2 and 2021 R2 due to adding InstallScript custom action to a Basic MSI or InstallScript MSI project extracting few binaries to a predefined writable folder during installation time. The standard user account has write access to these files and folders, hence replacing them during installation time can lead to a DLL hijacking vulnerability.

Affected products

Revenera InstallShield: from 2022 R2 before 2022 R2 (28.0.0.763); from 2021 R2 before 2021 R2 (27.0.0.126) — fixed in 2021 R2 (27.0.0.126), 2022 R2 (28.0.0.763)

How to fix

Upgrade to a fixed version: Revenera InstallShield 2021 R2 (27.0.0.126), 2022 R2 (28.0.0.763). Check the vendor advisory for mitigations.

References

https://community.revenera.com/s/article/cve-2023-29080-security-patch-for-the-possible-privileged-escalation-scenarios-identified-in-installshield-nbsp

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