CVE-2020-15592: SteelCentral Aternity Agent before 11.0.0.120 on Windows allows Privilege Escalation via a crafted file.

SteelCentral Aternity Agent before 11.0.0.120 on Windows allows Privilege Escalation via a crafted file.

SteelCentral Aternity Agent before 11.0.0.120 on Windows allows Privilege Escalation via a crafted file. It uses an executable running as a high privileged Windows service to perform administrative tasks and collect data from other processes. It distributes functionality among different processes and uses IPC (Inter-Process Communication) primitives to enable the processes to cooperate. The remotely callable methods from remotable objects available through interprocess communication allow loading of arbitrary plugins (i.e., C# assemblies) from the "%PROGRAMFILES(X86)%/Aternity Information Systems/Assistant/plugins” directory, where the name of the plugin is passed as part of an XML-serialized object. However, because the name of the DLL is concatenated with the “.\plugins” string, a directory traversal vulnerability exists in the way plugins are resolved.

Description from the National Vulnerability Database, published by MITRE

What it means for a small business

If your business uses Steelcentral Aternity Agent, install the vendor's update. If you're not sure whether you use it, ask whoever manages your computers.

How likely is an attack? The Exploit Prediction Scoring System, run by FIRST (the global association of security response teams), puts the odds of this one being exploited in the next 30 days at 1.9%, higher than 79% of CVEs. That’s above average: worth scheduling this week. Scored October 29, 2026, updated daily.

Check your own setup

Website check: reads what your site runs from the outside (WordPress version, plugins it can see, old server software) and matches it against this database.
Server check: what your web server says about itself, and whether that version has known flaws.

Sources

Part of the Huttenlocher Technologies vulnerability database, refreshed twice a day from CISA and the NVD. The title, category and plain-language guidance are ours; check the linked record before acting on a detail. This is general guidance, not a review of your systems.

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