What is CVE-2020-8961?

CVE-2020-8961 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Avira Free Antivirus. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2020-04-09.

How severe is CVE-2020-8961?

Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.

Is CVE-2020-8961 known to be exploited?

1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.

Vulnerability in Avira Free Antivirus

CVE-2020-8961

An issue was discovered in Avira Free-Antivirus before 15.0.2004.1825. The Self-Protection feature does not prohibit a write operation from an external process. Thus, code injection can be used to turn off this feature. After that, one can construct an event that will modify a file at a specific location, and pass this event to the driver, thereby defeating the anti-virus functionality.

EPSS: 0.020 (78.7th percentile) — read the EPSS interpretation.

CVSS v3 metric

CVSS v3 base score 9.8 (Critical). Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H.

Affected products

Avira Free_antivirus
N/a — versions n/a

Public proof-of-concept exploits

ARPSyndicate/cvemon

References

cve@mitre.org (x_refsource_CONFIRM, Release Notes, Vendor Advisory)

Frequently asked questions

What is CVE-2020-8961?: CVE-2020-8961 is a critical-severity vulnerability in Avira Free Antivirus. CVSS score: 9.8/10. Published 2020-04-09.
How severe is CVE-2020-8961?: Critical severity. CVSS v3 base score is 9.8 out of 10.
Is CVE-2020-8961 known to be exploited?: 1 public proof-of-concept repositories are indexed. Not currently listed in the CISA KEV catalog.