Cortex XDR Agent: Improper Control of User-Controlled File Leads to Local Privilege Escalation

A local privilege escalation (PE) vulnerability exists in the Palo Alto Networks Cortex XDR agent on Windows platforms that enables an authenticated local Windows user to execute programs with SYSTEM privileges.

Exploiting this vulnerability requires the user to have file creation privilege in the Windows root directory (such as C:).

Work around:
This issue is mitigated by preventing local authenticated Windows users from creating files in the Windows root directory (such as C:).