Vulnerability record · CVE-2025-53841 · published 3 December 2025
CVE-2025-53841: Inclusion from untrusted sphere vulnerability
The GC-AGENTS-SERVICE running as part of Akamai´s Guardicore Platform Agent for Windows versions prior to v49.20.1, v50.15.0, v51.12.0, v52.2.0 is affected by a local privilege escalation vulnerability. The service will attempt to read an OpenSSL configuration file from a non-existent location that standard Windows users have default write access to. This allows an unprivileged local user to create a crafted "openssl.cnf" file in that location and, by specifying the path to a custom DLL file in a custom OpenSSL engine definition, execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the Guardicore Agent process. Since Guardicore Agent runs with SYSTEM privileges, this permits an unprivileged user to fully elevate privileges to SYSTEM level in this manner.
Description
The GC-AGENTS-SERVICE running as part of Akamai´s Guardicore Platform Agent for Windows versions prior to v49.20.1, v50.15.0, v51.12.0, v52.2.0 is affected by a local privilege escalation vulnerability. The service will attempt to read an OpenSSL configuration file from a non-existent location that standard Windows users have default write access to. This allows an unprivileged local user to create a crafted "openssl.cnf" file in that location and, by specifying the path to a custom DLL file in a custom OpenSSL engine definition, execute arbitrary commands with the privileges of the Guardicore Agent process. Since Guardicore Agent runs with SYSTEM privileges, this permits an unprivileged user to fully elevate privileges to SYSTEM level in this manner.
CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:H/A:H
References
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Related vulnerabilities
Same products first, then exploited flaws of the same weakness class.
Source: NIST National Vulnerability Database (record CVE-2025-53841), CISA KEV, FIRST EPSS (scores of 2026-09-26). This page is refreshed as NVD updates the record.