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Link Following (Symlink)Weakness · CWE-59

CVE-2024-29188

HIGH · 7.9 CVSS v3.1 Published 2024-03-24
Patch available
A vendor patch is available. No clean upgrade release — apply the published patch.
See remediation →
79/100
Remediation priority · High
Patch available

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 · unedited
WiX toolset lets developers create installers for Windows Installer, the Windows installation engine. The custom action behind WiX's `RemoveFolderEx` functionality could allow a standard user to delete protected directories. `RemoveFolderEx` deletes an entire directory tree during installation or uninstallation. It does so by recursing every subdirectory starting at a specified directory and adding each subdirectory to the list of directories Windows Installer should delete. If the setup author instructed `RemoveFolderEx` to delete a per-user folder from a per-machine installer, an attacker could create a directory junction in that per-user folder pointing to a per-machine, protected directory. Windows Installer, when executing the per-machine installer after approval by an administrator, would delete the target of the directory junction. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.14.1 and 4.0.5.

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
How this class of weakness works · CWE-59

A file operation follows a symbolic link without checking where it actually points, so an attacker who can plant or swap a link redirects the operation to a file they should not be able to touch. It is a common local privilege-escalation primitive. Remediation is resolving and validating the real target path, and avoiding operations on attacker-controllable links.

General guidance for the link following (symlink) class — the official description and references above are authoritative for this specific CVE. Want a bespoke review and a reviewed fix? Ask our team →

CVSS 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
Required
Scope
Changed
Confidentiality
None
Integrity
High
Availability
High

CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:R/S:C/C:N/I:H/A:H

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.

dbcve · scoped
Patch available Apply the vendor patch
Vendor patch github.com →
Recommended fix High confidence

WiX toolset 3.14.1 (for v3.x) or WiX toolset 4.0.5 (for v4.x)

  1. Identify the current WiX toolset version in use (check the installed version or project references)
  2. Determine which WiX major version branch is being used (v3.x or v4.x)
  3. Download WiX toolset version 3.14.1 (for v3.x projects) or version 4.0.5 (for v4.x projects) from the official releases at https://github.com/wixtoolset/wix/releases
  4. Install the appropriate fixed version over the current installation
  5. Verify the installation was successful by checking the installed version
  6. For projects using WiX as a NuGet package, update the package reference to version 3.14.1 or 4.0.5 in the project file or package manager
  7. Rebuild any installer projects to confirm compatibility with the new version

Generated from the published advisory — verify against the referenced sources before acting.

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References Go to the primary sourcePrimary sources — vendor advisories, patches and trackers. Where our summary and a reference disagree, the reference wins.

Primary sources

Practitioner notes

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Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2024-29188 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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