Ten-Year-Old Vulnerabilities in Virus Scanners Avast and AVG Discovered
SentinelLabs, SentinelOne's threat research team, has discovered two serious flaws in Avast and AVG. The vulnerabilities in the antivirus programs went undiscovered for a decade and could potentially affect tens of millions of users.
So far, SentinelLabs has found no evidence of abuse.
The vulnerabilities in Avast and AVG (acquired by Avast in 2016) allow attackers to modify privileges so they can disable security products, compromise the operating system, or perform malicious operations unimpeded.
According to Avast, the security risk has crept into Avast 12.1, the software version released in January 2012. Given the longevity of this flaw by over a decade, SentinelOne estimates that tens of millions of users may have been affected by it.
SentinelLabs' findings were proactivel...