CVE-2018-10169
ProtonVPN 1.3.3 for Windows suffers from a SYSTEM privilege escalation vulnerability through the "ProtonVPN Service" service.
Does this matter?
High impact if exploited, but EPSS currently rates exploitation as unlikely (2.45%). Schedule it in the normal patch cycle and watch for a rise in EPSS or a public exploit.
Description
ProtonVPN 1.3.3 for Windows suffers from a SYSTEM privilege escalation vulnerability through the "ProtonVPN Service" service. This service establishes an NetNamedPipe endpoint that allows arbitrary installed applications to connect and call publicly exposed methods. The "Connect" method accepts a class instance argument that provides attacker control of the OpenVPN command line. An attacker can specify a dynamic library plugin that should run for every new VPN connection. This plugin will execute code in the context of the SYSTEM user.
- CVSS 3.0
- 9.8 CRITICALCVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- EPSS
- 2.45% probability · 84th percentile
- Public exploits
- None in Exploit-DB
- CISA KEV
- Not listed
- Weakness
- CWE-732
- Affected
- protonmail/protonvpn
- Source
- cve@mitre.org
EPSS 2.5% since 27 October 2026; no change recorded yet. Points are recorded when the score first appears and whenever it moves by a percentage point or more.
References
- https://github.com/VerSprite/research/blob/master/advisories/VS-2018-017.mdThird Party Advisory
- https://github.com/VerSprite/research/blob/master/advisories/VS-2018-017.mdThird Party Advisory
Source: NVD record, EPSS from FIRST.org, KEV from CISA, exploits from Exploit-DB. Refreshed daily. Download this record as JSON.