CVE-2023-28142 — A Race Condition exists in the Qualys Cloud Agent for Windows platform in versio

A Race Condition exists in the Qualys Cloud Agent for Windows platform in versions from 3.1.3.34 and before 4.5.3.1. This allows attackers to escalate privileges limited on the local machine during uninstallation of the Qualys Cloud Agent for Windows. Attackers may gain SYSTEM le

01What is this vulnerability?

A Race Condition exists in the Qualys Cloud Agent for Windows platform in versions from 3.1.3.34 and before 4.5.3.1. This allows attackers to escalate privileges limited on the local machine during uninstallation of the Qualys Cloud Agent for Windows. Attackers may gain SYSTEM level privileges on that asset to run arbitrary commands.

02Affected products

Vendor	Product	Versions
Qualys	Cloud Agent	3.1.3.34

03Active exploitation status

Not currently listed on the CISA Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. EPSS is the best forward-looking signal — see the EPSS row above.

04Recommended remediation

• Patch to a fixed version listed in the vendor advisory (see references below).
• Mitigate with WAF rules, network egress filters, or feature flags where the patch is not yet available.
• Hunt historical logs for exploitation indicators — see Detection signatures below.

05Technical details

For the full vendor write-up, exploit chains, and reference implementations, see the references list in section 09.

06Detection signatures

Ask SARA in chat to draft a starting detection for this CVE in your stack of choice.

07Related CVEs

No directly-cited follow-up CVEs in the KB record for this advisory. The references list in section 09 carries the vendor cross-references.

08Timeline

• Published: 2023-04-18T15:51:58.344Z
• Last modified: 2025-03-03T19:22:08.808Z

09References

• www.qualys.com — https://www.qualys.com/security-advisories/