CVE-2025-69875: Quick Heal Privilege Escalation Flaw

CVE-2025-69875 Overview

A privilege escalation vulnerability exists in Quick Heal Total Security 23.0.0 within the quarantine management component. The flaw stems from insufficient validation of restore paths combined with improper permission handling, which allows a low-privileged local user to restore quarantined files into protected system directories. This behavior can be exploited by a local attacker to place malicious files in high-privilege locations, potentially leading to full system compromise through privilege escalation.

Critical Impact

Local attackers with low privileges can abuse the quarantine restore functionality to write arbitrary files to protected system directories, enabling privilege escalation to SYSTEM-level access.

Affected Products

• Quick Heal Total Security 23.0.0
• Quick Heal Total Security Quarantine Management Component

Discovery Timeline

• 2026-02-03 - CVE-2025-69875 published to NVD
• 2026-02-04 - Last updated in NVD database

Technical Details for CVE-2025-69875

Vulnerability Analysis

This vulnerability is classified under CWE-269 (Improper Privilege Management), which occurs when a product does not properly assign, modify, track, or check privileges for an actor, creating an unintended sphere of control. In the context of Quick Heal Total Security, the quarantine management component operates with elevated SYSTEM privileges to handle potentially malicious files. However, the restore functionality fails to adequately validate the destination path specified by users, nor does it properly drop privileges when writing files to disk.

The quarantine feature in antivirus products is designed to isolate suspicious files by moving them to a protected storage location. When users restore files from quarantine, the software should restore them to their original location with appropriate permissions. The vulnerability arises because the restore operation inherits the antivirus service's elevated privileges without proper validation of the target directory.

Root Cause

The root cause of this vulnerability lies in the improper privilege management within the quarantine restore functionality. The Quick Heal Total Security service runs with SYSTEM privileges to effectively scan and quarantine files across the entire filesystem. When processing restore requests, the component fails to implement two critical security controls:

1. Path Validation Failure: The restore path provided by the user is not properly sanitized or validated against a whitelist of acceptable directories, allowing attackers to specify arbitrary paths including protected system directories such as C:\Windows\System32\ or C:\Program Files\.

2. Privilege Inheritance: The file write operation during restore inherits the SYSTEM-level privileges of the antivirus service rather than impersonating the requesting user's security context, enabling writes to directories that would normally be inaccessible to low-privileged users.

Attack Vector

The attack vector requires local access to the system with low-privilege user credentials. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability through the following attack chain:

1. The attacker, operating as a low-privileged user, triggers the antivirus to quarantine a crafted file (or uses an existing quarantined file)
2. Using the Quick Heal interface or API, the attacker initiates a restore operation
3. During the restore process, the attacker manipulates the destination path to point to a protected system directory
4. The quarantine service, running as SYSTEM, writes the file to the specified location without proper privilege checks
5. The attacker can then leverage the placed file for privilege escalation, such as placing a malicious DLL in a path searched by a privileged service

A proof of concept demonstrating this vulnerability is available at the GitHub Proof of Concept repository. The exploitation does not require user interaction once the attacker has local access, making it a practical vector for insider threats or post-compromise lateral movement scenarios.

Detection Methods for CVE-2025-69875

Indicators of Compromise

• Unexpected files appearing in protected system directories such as C:\Windows\System32\ or C:\Program Files\
• Quick Heal quarantine restore operations targeting directories outside of user-accessible paths
• Anomalous file creation events attributed to the Quick Heal service process in privileged locations
• Modification timestamps on system files that coincide with quarantine restore activity

Detection Strategies

• Monitor Windows Security Event logs for file creation events (Event ID 4663) in protected directories where the process is the Quick Heal service
• Implement EDR rules to detect file writes by antivirus processes to system directories not associated with normal AV operations
• Configure SIEM alerts for quarantine restore operations where the destination path contains System32, Windows, or Program Files
• Use SentinelOne Singularity to detect anomalous process behavior and privilege escalation attempts following quarantine operations

Monitoring Recommendations

• Enable verbose logging for Quick Heal Total Security quarantine operations to capture restore destination paths
• Deploy file integrity monitoring (FIM) on critical system directories to detect unauthorized file placements
• Correlate Quick Heal service activity with subsequent privileged process executions that may indicate exploitation
• Monitor for DLL sideloading indicators following quarantine restore events

How to Mitigate CVE-2025-69875

Immediate Actions Required

• Restrict quarantine restore functionality to administrator accounts only until a patch is available
• Implement application whitelisting to prevent execution of unauthorized files placed in system directories
• Deploy SentinelOne endpoint protection to detect and block privilege escalation attempts
• Review and audit recent quarantine restore operations for suspicious destination paths
• Consider temporarily disabling the quarantine restore feature if operationally feasible

Patch Information

At the time of publication, no official patch has been released by Quick Heal. Organizations should monitor Quick Heal's official security advisories for patch availability. For technical details regarding this vulnerability, refer to the GitHub Proof of Concept.

Workarounds

• Restrict access to the Quick Heal quarantine management interface through local security policies
• Implement Windows Software Restriction Policies (SRP) or AppLocker rules to prevent execution from directories commonly targeted by this attack
• Use NTFS permissions to add additional protection to critical system directories
• Deploy endpoint detection and response (EDR) solutions like SentinelOne to monitor and block suspicious file operations

# Example: Restrict quarantine folder access using icacls
icacls "C:\ProgramData\Quick Heal\Quarantine" /inheritance:r /grant:r "SYSTEM:(OI)(CI)F" /grant:r "Administrators:(OI)(CI)F"