CVE Vulnerabilities

CVE-2018-12572

Cleartext Storage of Sensitive Information

Published: Mar 21, 2019 | Modified: Aug 24, 2020
CVSS 3.x
7.8
HIGH
Source:
NVD
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
CVSS 2.x
2.1 LOW
AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N
RedHat/V2
RedHat/V3
Ubuntu

Avast Free Antivirus prior to 19.1.2360 stores user credentials in memory upon login, which allows local users to obtain sensitive information by dumping AvastUI.exe application memory and parsing the data.

Weakness

The product stores sensitive information in cleartext within a resource that might be accessible to another control sphere.

Affected Software

Name Vendor Start Version End Version
Free_antivirus Avast * 19.1.2360 (excluding)

Extended Description

Because the information is stored in cleartext (i.e., unencrypted), attackers could potentially read it. Even if the information is encoded in a way that is not human-readable, certain techniques could determine which encoding is being used, then decode the information. When organizations adopt cloud services, it can be easier for attackers to access the data from anywhere on the Internet. In some systems/environments such as cloud, the use of “double encryption” (at both the software and hardware layer) might be required, and the developer might be solely responsible for both layers, instead of shared responsibility with the administrator of the broader system/environment.

Potential Mitigations

References