#windows

**How could an attacker exploit this vulnerability?** A locally authenticated attacker could manipulate information on the Sysinternals services to achieve elevation from local user to SYSTEM admin.

**According to the CVSS metric, the attack vector is local (AV:L). Why does the CVE title indicate that this is a remote code execution?** The word **Remote** in the title refers to the location of the attacker. This type of exploit is sometimes referred to as Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE). The attack itself is carried out locally. For example, when the score indicates that the **Attack Vector** is **Local** and **User Interaction** is **Required**, this could describe an exploit in which an attacker, through social engineering, convinces a victim to download and open a specially crafted file from a website which leads to a local attack on their computer.

**What type of information could be disclosed by this vulnerability?** Exploiting this vulnerability could allow the disclosure of initialized or uninitialized memory in the process heap.

**What privileges could an attacker gain?** An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges.

**What is the relationship between Mark of the Web and Windows SmartScreen?** When you download a file from the internet, Windows adds the zone identifier or Mark of the Web as an NTFS stream to the file. So, when you run the file, Windows SmartScreen checks if there is a zone identifier Alternate Data Stream (ADS) attached to the file. If the ADS indicates ZoneId=3 which means that the file was downloaded from the internet, the SmartScreen does a reputation check. For more information on SmartScreen, please visit Microsoft Defender SmartScreen overview | Microsoft Learn.

**According to the CVSS metric, privileges required is low (PR:L). What does that mean for this vulnerability?** Any authenticated user could trigger this vulnerability. It does not require admin or other elevated privileges.

**According to the CVSS metric, the attack complexity is high (AC:H). What does that mean for this vulnerability?** Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to win a race condition.

**What type of privileges could an attacker gain through this vulnerability?** A domain user could use this vulnerability to elevate privileges to SYSTEM assigned integrity level.

**According to the CVSS metric, a successful exploitation could lead to a scope change (S:C). What does this mean for this vulnerability?** Successful exploitation of this vulnerability could allow a Hyper-V guest to affect the functionality of the Hyper-V host.

**What privileges could an attacker gain?** An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges.