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Fencer Intel
high 7.0

CVE-2019-16784 json

Local Privilege Escalation present only on the Windows version of PyInstaller

published 6y ago modified last mo. also GHSA-7fcj-pq9j-wh2r , PYSEC-2020-175 , EUVD-2020-0155

cvss
7.0
version 3.1, CNA
cisa kev
Not listed
not in CISA's catalog
epss
0.7%
EPSS 0.7% chance of exploitation in 30 days, percentile 53%
public exploits
0
none known

Summary

In PyInstaller before version 3.6, only on Windows, a local privilege escalation vulnerability is present in this particular case: If a software using PyInstaller in "onefile" mode is launched by a privileged user (at least more than the current one) which have his "TempPath" resolving to a world writable directory. This is the case for example if the software is launched as a service or as a scheduled task using a system account (TempPath will be C:\Windows\Temp). In order to be exploitable the software has to be (re)started after the attacker launch the exploit program, so for a service launched at startup, a service restart is needed (e.g. after a crash or an upgrade).

Patch / fix

  • pypi pyinstaller 3.6
  • pyinstaller pyinstaller 3.6

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Exploit prediction

0.70% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 53% of all scored CVEs (FIRST EPSS, 2026-11-09).

CVSS scores

assigned by version score vector
CNA 3.1 7.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 3.1 7.8 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
NVD 2.0 4.4 AV:L/AC:M/Au:N/C:P/I:P/A:P
GitHub 3.1 7.0 CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:H/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H

Affected packages

ecosystem package affected fixed in
pypi pyinstaller
<3.6
3.6

Affected products

  • PyInstaller PyInstaller

Classification

Weakness
  • CWE-250 Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
  • CWE-732 Incorrect Permission Assignment for Critical Resource

References

Sources

Fencer Intel keeps one entry per vulnerability: the CVE id wins, then GHSA, and records that alias each other are merged, except that two CVEs always keep separate entries. The same data is available as JSON.