CVE-2018-6233
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 · uneditedA buffer overflow privilege escalation vulnerability in Trend Micro Maximum Security (Consumer) 2018 could allow a local attacker to escalate privileges on vulnerable installations due to a flaw within processing of IOCTL 0x222060 by the tmnciesc.sys driver. An attacker must first obtain the ability to execute low-privileged code on the target system in order to exploit this vulnerability.
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 confidenceA buffer overflow vulnerability in the tmnciesc.sys kernel driver of Trend Micro Maximum Security 2018 allows local privilege escalation when processing IOCTL 0x222060. An attacker with low-privileged code execution can overflow a buffer to gain SYSTEM-level code execution.
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<= 12.0<= 12.0<= 12.0<= 12.0CVSS 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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Identify installed Trend Micro security productsCheck Programs and Features or registry for installed Trend Micro products: 'reg query "HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall" /s | findstr -i Trend' or review output of 'Get-WmiObject -Class Win32_Product | Select-Object Name,Version'Affected if Any Trend Micro Antivirus+, Internet Security, Maximum Security, or Premium Security is listed
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Verify product version is affectedCheck the installed version of the Trend Micro product identified in step 1. Compare against affected version range <= 12.0Affected if The installed product version is 12.0 or lower, or if version cannot be determined but product is listed as affected
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Locate the vulnerable tmnciesc.sys driverSearch for tmnciesc.sys on the system: 'dir /s C:\Windows\System32\drivers\tmnciesc.sys' or 'Get-ChildItem -Path C:\ -Filter tmnciesc.sys -Recurse -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue'Affected if The file tmnciesc.sys exists on the system, indicating the vulnerable driver component is present
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Confirm driver is loaded and activeCheck if the driver is loaded: 'sc query tmnciesc' or 'driverquery /v | findstr tmnciesc'Affected if The tmnciesc.sys driver shows as RUNNING or LOADED in the output
The environment is affected if a Trend Micro security product version 12.0 or lower is installed AND the tmnciesc.sys driver is present on the system.
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 dataApply the vendor security update for Trend Micro Maximum Security 2018. If patching is delayed, consider temporarily disabling or uninstalling the affected component as a compensating control.
- Consultation2.0 h
- Implementation4.0 h
- Testing3.0 h
- Review / QA2.0 h
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Scan for this in your stack
Free · runs locallyCheck whether your project pulls in CVE-2018-6233 — 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-2018-6233 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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