Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
Weakness
The product does not initialize or incorrectly initializes a resource, which might leave the resource in an unexpected state when it is accessed or used.
Affected Software
| Name | Vendor | Start Version | End Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows_10 | Microsoft | - (including) | - (including) |
| Windows_10 | Microsoft | 20h2 (including) | 20h2 (including) |
| Windows_10 | Microsoft | 1607 (including) | 1607 (including) |
| Windows_10 | Microsoft | 1803 (including) | 1803 (including) |
| Windows_10 | Microsoft | 1809 (including) | 1809 (including) |
| Windows_10 | Microsoft | 1909 (including) | 1909 (including) |
| Windows_10 | Microsoft | 2004 (including) | 2004 (including) |
| Windows_7 | Microsoft | –sp1 (including) | –sp1 (including) |
| Windows_8.1 | Microsoft | - (including) | - (including) |
| Windows_rt_8.1 | Microsoft | - (including) | - (including) |
| Windows_server_2008 | Microsoft | –sp2 (including) | –sp2 (including) |
| Windows_server_2008 | Microsoft | r2-sp1 (including) | r2-sp1 (including) |
| Windows_server_2012 | Microsoft | - (including) | - (including) |
| Windows_server_2012 | Microsoft | r2 (including) | r2 (including) |
| Windows_server_2016 | Microsoft | - (including) | - (including) |
| Windows_server_2016 | Microsoft | 20h2 (including) | 20h2 (including) |
| Windows_server_2016 | Microsoft | 1909 (including) | 1909 (including) |
| Windows_server_2016 | Microsoft | 2004 (including) | 2004 (including) |
| Windows_server_2019 | Microsoft | - (including) | - (including) |
Potential Mitigations
- Use a language that does not allow this weakness to occur or provides constructs that make this weakness easier to avoid.
- For example, in Java, if the programmer does not explicitly initialize a variable, then the code could produce a compile-time error (if the variable is local) or automatically initialize the variable to the default value for the variable’s type. In Perl, if explicit initialization is not performed, then a default value of undef is assigned, which is interpreted as 0, false, or an equivalent value depending on the context in which the variable is accessed.