A high-severity privilege escalation vulnerability in Malwarebytes AdwCleaner allows local, non-admin users to gain full SYSTEM access.

This vulnerability involves an insecure log file deletion operation where the target location is user-controllable. An authenticated, non-admin user can exploit this by creating files in specific paths and intercepting the application log deletion flow to achieve SYSTEM-level privilege escalation.

The ability for a standard user to escalate privileges to SYSTEM represents a critical security failure, as it grants an attacker complete control over the local machine. With a CVSS score of 8.7, this flaw poses a significant risk of full system compromise, data theft, and the installation of persistent malicious software.

Immediate Action: Update Malwarebytes AdwCleaner to version 8.7.0 or later immediately to apply the vendor-provided patch.

Proactive Monitoring: Monitor local system logs for unauthorized file system operations or attempts to create symbolic links in directories typically accessed by administrative maintenance tasks.

Compensating Controls: Restrict local user permissions where possible and ensure that non-administrative users do not have unnecessary write access to directories where system applications store log files.

Public Exploit Available: exploit_available (unknown)

Given the severity of this privilege escalation flaw, organizations should prioritize updating all instances of Malwarebytes AdwCleaner. Users should ensure the application is patched to version 8.7.0 to eliminate the insecure deletion mechanism, thereby preventing local attackers from gaining elevated control over the operating system.