Making sure your devices are safe is essential in today's technologically advanced environment. Hacking is a problem that people face on a daily basis and that, under the specific circumstances, has the potential to harm any one of us. It's of the utmost importance that we stay protected.
The flaws in your system can be used by these hackers to access your data. To address these problems in your system, device manufacturers release updates on a regular basis.
A security advisory was recently released by HP, one of the most well-known computer manufacturers, warning customers about a recently found vulnerability in one of its pre-installed softwares.
HP Support Assistant
HP has a wide range of computer models, including desktop and laptop variants, as well as peripherals. For the best possible user experience, the computer manufacturer provides a ton of features and pre-installed applications.
The HP Support Assistant is one of the pre-installed softwares in all HP and Omen-sub brand computers.
This software is very useful and essential for HP devices. With the help of HP Support Assistant, issues may be fixed, hardware diagnostic tests can be run, technical specifications can be examined in greater detail, and HP devices can even have their BIOS and driver versions checked.
However, the tech giant recently released a security advisory warning customers of a recently identified software vulnerability.
What Is the Flaw With HP Support Assistant
According to a news story by Bleepingcomputer, researchers at Secure D found the vulnerability and had informed HP about it.
The bug has a "high" severity score of 8.2, with 10 being the highest. Tracked as CVE-2022-38395, this flaw gives attackers the ability to increase their privilege especially on . systems that are vulnerable.
How Can This Flaw Affect HP Devices
According to the advisory, users who attempt to execute HP Performance Tune-up from within HP Support Assistant will experience a DLL hijacking vulnerability.
When a malicious actor inserts a DLL containing malicious code in the same location as the executable being misused, they are engaging in DLL hijacking, which takes advantage of the fact that Windows prioritizes these libraries over DLLs in the System32 directory, as per Bleepingcomputer.
Thus, this is what occurs.
Attackers who have already gained access to a system through low-privileged malware or a RAT tool can use CVE-2022-38395 to their advantage.
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What Can You Do If You're One of the Affected Users
As previously mentioned, computer or software developers regularly issue updates to ensure that their users' devices are safe.
Therefore, affected users by this HP Support Assistant flaw are advised to install the issued update by the computer manufacturer.
In fact, due to the simplicity of exploitation, it is advised that all HP users upgrade Support Assistant as soon as possible.
What HP Support Assistant Versions Are Affected
Using the Microsoft Store, HP users using version 9.x of the software can update to the latest version of the HP Support Assistant.
However, a security update won't be given to users of version 8.x. What they can do is to check for updates in the "About" section of the software.
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