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Uncontrolled Search Path (DLL Hijack)Weakness · CWE-427

CVE-2025-34109

HIGH · 8.5 CVSS v4.0 Published 2025-07-15
No fix yet
No fix has been published. The vendor has not shipped a fixed release or patch. You remain exposed.
See remediation →
87/100
Remediation priority · High
Public exploit Zero-click

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
PSEvents.exe in multiple Panda Security products runs hourly with SYSTEM privileges and loads DLL files from a user-writable directory without proper validation. An attacker with low-privileged access who can write DLL files to the monitored directory can achieve arbitrary code execution with SYSTEM privileges. Affected products include Panda Global Protection 2016, Panda Antivirus Pro 2016, Panda Small Business Protection, and Panda Internet Security 2016 (all versions up to 16.1.2).

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-427

The program loads a library or executable from a location an attacker can influence — a writable directory early in the search order — so a malicious file is loaded with the application's privileges. On Windows this is the classic DLL-hijack. Remediation is loading only from fully-qualified trusted paths and controlling the search order explicitly.

General guidance for the uncontrolled search path (dll hijack) 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
Authentication
X
User interaction
None
Scope
X

CVSS:4.0/AV:L/AC:L/AT:N/PR:L/UI:N/VC:H/VI:H/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X

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
Recommended fix Moderate confidence

Migrate to currently supported Panda Security/WatchGuard endpoint protection products or alternative modern security solutions

  1. These Panda Security 2016 products (Global Protection 2016, Antivirus Pro 2016, Small Business Protection, Internet Security 2016) are past end-of-life and no longer receive security updates.
  2. The vulnerable component PSEvents.exe is part of discontinued legacy Panda Security consumer product lines.
  3. Replace the deprecated Panda 2016 products with a currently supported security solution from Panda Security (now WatchGuard) or an alternative vendor.
  4. If continued use is absolutely required, remove SYSTEM privileges from the PSEvents.exe scheduled task via Task Scheduler, though this may break product functionality.
  5. Modern Windows systems may already block the DLL hijacking through Windows Defender or EMET protections; ensure these are enabled.
Caveat Panda Security 2016 products are unsupported and cannot receive patches; legacy product migration will require fresh installation and potentially new licensing

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

No vendor fix exists The vendor has not published a patch for this.

There is no version to upgrade to and no patch to apply. Every affected install stays exposed until the vendor ships a fix — or somebody else builds one.

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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

Contributed

Peer-ranked notes from engineers who’ve handled CVE-2025-34109 in production — separate from our analysis above.

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