Privilege escalation vulnerability in McAfee VSE when McTray run with elevated privileges

published 2018-05-25 8 y ago modified 2026-06-17 4 mo ago also EUVD-2018-18421

cvss: 6.8; version 3.0, CNA
cisa kev: Not listed; not in CISA's catalog
epss: 0.2%; EPSS 0.2% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 7%
public exploits: 0; none known

Privilege Escalation vulnerability in Microsoft Windows client (McTray.exe) in McAfee VirusScan Enterprise (VSE) 8.8 prior to Patch 13 allows local users to spawn unrelated processes with elevated privileges via the system administrator granting McTray.exe elevated privileges (by default it runs with the current user's privileges).

Patch / fix

fixed in 1

McAfee, LLC VirusScan Enterprise (VSE) 8.8 Patch 13

Exploit prediction

0.18% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 7% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-08).

CVSS scores

assigned by	version	score	vector
CNA	3.0	6.8	CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:H/PR:H/UI:R/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD	3.0	3.9	CVSS:3.0/AV:P/AC:L/PR:H/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
NVD	2.0	2.1	AV:L/AC:L/Au:N/C:P/I:N/A:N

Affected products

McAfee, LLC VirusScan Enterprise (VSE)

Classification

Weakness

CWE-264 Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls
CWE-274 Improper Handling of Insufficient Privileges
CWE-269 Improper Privilege Management
CWE-311 Missing Encryption of Sensitive Data

References

kc.mcafee.com /corporate/index?page=content&id=SB10237

Sources

CVE List CVE-2018-6674
NVD CVE-2018-6674

Fencer Vulns keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.

Summary