CVE-2019-18988
HIGHCVE-2019-18988 is a high-severity (CVSS 7) CWE-521 vulnerability. It is in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2021-11-03) — treat it as actively exploited and patch now. No vendor fix is recorded yet; mitigation options are listed below.
TeamViewer Desktop through 14.7.1965 allows a bypass of remote-login access control because the same key is used for different customers' installations. It used a shared AES key for…
Exploitation Status
Actively exploited in the wild
- Confirmed by CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03. Federal agencies were required to remediate by 2022-05-03.
Exploitation and automatability from CISA (KEV catalog and SSVC triage) for CVE-2019-18988.
EPSS Exploitation Probability
Probability of exploitation in the next 30 days, from FIRST.org EPSS.
How urgent is this, really
CVE-2019-18988 by exploitation likelihood (EPSS) against impact (CVSS). Outside the shaded patch-first corner.
Where this sits among everything scored
Of 395,249 CVEs with a current EPSS score, this one falls in the < 10% band (highlighted). Counts from FIRST.org, log-scaled.
Description
TeamViewer Desktop through 14.7.1965 allows a bypass of remote-login access control because the same key is used for different customers' installations. It used a shared AES key for all installations since at least as far back as v7.0.43148, and used it for at least OptionsPasswordAES in the current version of the product. If an attacker were to know this key, they could decrypt protect information stored in the registry or configuration files of TeamViewer. With versions before v9.x , this allowed for attackers to decrypt the Unattended Access password to the system (which allows for remote login to the system as well as headless file browsing). The latest version still uses the same key for OptionPasswordAES but appears to have changed how the Unattended Access password is stored. While in most cases an attacker requires an existing session on a system, if the registry/configuration keys were stored off of the machine (such as in a file share or online), an attacker could then decrypt the required password to login to the system.
Affected Products
teamviewerteamviewerResearch use only. For defensive security, authorized penetration testing, and academic research only. Never execute exploit code against systems without explicit written authorization.
TeamViewer Desktop through 14.7.1965 allows a bypass of remote-login acc…
TeamViewer Desktop through 14.7.1965 allows a bypass of remote-login acc…
TeamViewer Desktop through 14.7.1965 allows a bypass of remote-login acc…
TeamViewer Desktop through 14.7.1965 allows a bypass of remote-login acc…
Detection & mitigation playbook
VulnerabilityDetect
Identify every host running the affected component and compare the installed build against the fixed version below — for source-built or distro-packaged software the version string, not a lockfile, is the source of truth (`dpkg -l`, `rpm -q`, or the binary's own `--version`).
Remediation status
No fixed release is recorded for CVE-2019-18988 yet. Track the upstream advisory, and apply the exposure-reduction steps below in the meantime.
Mitigate without a patch
Put an independent control in front of the weakness: restrict the affected endpoint or interface to trusted networks, require an additional authentication factor or proxy-level check, and invalidate existing sessions and credentials in case the flaw has already been used.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CVE-2019-18988 in your dependencies?
Find it across , including transitive dependencies.