{"id":"CVE-2018-10169","url":"https://www.cyber-defence.io/tools/cve/CVE-2018-10169","generatedAt":"2026-10-28T22:18:56.677Z","title":"ProtonVPN 1.3.3 for Windows suffers from a SYSTEM privilege escalation vulnerability through the \"ProtonVPN Service\" service.","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.","published":"2018-04-16T21:29:00.000Z","lastModified":"2026-06-17T01:33:37.000Z","status":"Modified","sourceIdentifier":"cve@mitre.org","cvss":{"version":"3.0","score":9.8,"severity":"CRITICAL","vector":"CVSS:3.0/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H"},"cwe":["CWE-732"],"affected":["protonmail/protonvpn"],"epss":{"score":0.02452,"percentile":0.84308,"date":"2026-10-27","history":[]},"kev":{"listed":false},"exploits":{"count":0,"verified":false,"firstPublished":null,"source":"Exploit-DB (https://gitlab.com/exploit-database/exploitdb)","entries":[]},"verdict":{"level":"high","text":"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."},"changes":[],"references":[{"url":"https://github.com/VerSprite/research/blob/master/advisories/VS-2018-017.md","tags":["Third Party Advisory"],"source":"cve@mitre.org"},{"url":"https://github.com/VerSprite/research/blob/master/advisories/VS-2018-017.md","tags":["Third Party Advisory"],"source":"af854a3a-2127-422b-91ae-364da2661108"}],"sources":{"nvd":"https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2018-10169","epss":"https://www.first.org/epss/","kev":"https://www.cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog","exploitdb":"https://www.exploit-db.com/"},"licence":"CC BY 4.0 — link back to the CVE Explorer if you publish the results; upstream data remains subject to its own terms."}