CVE-2018-3688
Official description Straight from the sourceThe vendor's or NVD's own wording, published unedited. Authoritative, but often terse — it says what broke, rarely what to do.
NVD · uneditedUnquoted service paths in Intel Quartus Prime Programmer and Tools in versions 15.1 - 18.0 allow a local attacker to potentially execute arbitrary code.
Technical summary Written by usOur analysis, written from the advisory, the CVSS vector and the affected-version data. It adds context the advisory leaves out, and never invents facts that are not in the source.
dbcve analysis · high confidenceThis is an unquoted service path vulnerability in Intel Quartus Prime Programmer and Tools versions 15.1 through 18.0. When Windows service executable paths contain spaces and are not enclosed in quotes, the OS may misinterpret the path and attempt to execute a malicious binary from an attacker-controlled location, allowing local privilege escalation to SYSTEM level.
Verify against the referenced sources before acting — the references below are authoritative for this CVE, this summary is not.
Affected products & versions What the vendor confirmedThe version ranges the vendor confirmed as vulnerable. If your version sits inside a range here, treat yourself as exposed until you have upgraded.
NVD · CPE data>= 15.1, <= 18.0CVSS breakdown How the score is builtThe industry scoring standard. It rates how the flaw is reached, what it takes to exploit, and what an attacker gains — the score is derived from those, not the other way round.
From the vector- Attack vector
- Local
- Complexity
- Low
- Privileges
- Low
- User interaction
- None
- Scope
- Unchanged
- Confidentiality
- High
- Integrity
- High
- Availability
- High
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
Am I affected? How to checkSteps we derive from the advisory and the affected-version data, so you can decide whether this CVE reaches your setup. They are a guide, not a scan — your own configuration is the authority.
dbcve checksWork through these to decide whether this CVE applies to you.
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Check if Intel Quartus Prime is installedOpen Windows Registry Editor and navigate to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\ or look for Intel Quartus Prime in Programs and Features. Also check for the installation directory (commonly C:\intel quartus prime\).Affected if Intel Quartus Prime Programmer and Tools is found on the system
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Determine the installed version of Intel Quartus PrimeCheck the version in the registry key or in Add/Remove Programs. Look for a version string that falls within the range 15.1 through 18.0.Affected if The installed version is greater than or equal to 15.1 and less than or equal to 18.0
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Identify Windows services associated with Intel Quartus PrimeOpen Command Prompt as Administrator and run: sc query type= service state= all | findstr /i "quartus" to list all services containing 'quartus' in their name.Affected if Any Quartus Prime-related Windows services exist on the system
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Check if service executable paths are unquoted and contain spacesFor each identified service, run: sc qc <service_name> to query the service configuration. Examine the BINARY_PATH_NAME field. Look for paths that contain spaces but are not enclosed in quotation marks.Affected if The BINARY_PATH_NAME contains spaces and is not surrounded by quotation marks (for example, shows C:\Program Files\Intel Quartus Prime\bin\quartus_pgm.exe instead of "C:\Program Files\Intel Quartus Prime\bin\quartus_pgm.exe")
A system is affected if Intel Quartus Prime Programmer and Tools version 15.1 through 18.0 is installed AND Windows services for Quartus Prime have unquoted executable paths containing spaces, allowing potential privilege escalation to SYSTEM level.
Generated from the published advisory. Verify against your own configuration.
Remediation Closing itWhat it takes to close this. Where a vendor fix exists we point at it; where none exists we say so plainly, and can build one. Effort estimates are scoped from the advisory, not from your codebase.
From vendor dataUpdate to Intel Quartus Prime version 18.1 or later which contains the patched installer, or manually locate and quote the service paths in the Windows registry for affected installations.
- Consultation2.0 h
- Implementation2.0 h
- Testing2.0 h
- Review / QA1.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2018-3688 — or any other known-vulnerable package — straight from your lock files. Free and open source; it runs locally and uploads nothing.
References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.
Primary sourcesPractitioner notes
ContributedPeer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2018-3688 in production — separate from our analysis above.
The advisory tells you what broke. It rarely tells you what actually worked. If you’ve dealt with this one, that detail is what the next engineer is searching for.
- The version that genuinely resolved it — not the one the vendor claimed
- A config change or rule that shut the vector down
- A gotcha in the upgrade path that cost you an afternoon
No notes yet
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- Verified mitigations, workarounds, and config changes
- Version or environment caveats, and links to real fixes
- No weaponised exploit code, or anything meant to cause harm
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