Executive brief
Protegent 360 is an antivirus and security suite designed to protect Windows systems from malware and unauthorized file changes. A vulnerability in its core engine allows any user on the computer, even those with restricted guest access, to bypass security protections and gain full administrative control. This could allow an attacker to disable the antivirus, delete critical system files, or steal sensitive data.
Technical details
The Protegent File Filter driver (pgsecdl.sys version 9.0.0.1) in Protegent 360 v2.0.0.4 fails to implement proper security descriptors on its device objects. The driver exposes IOCTL interfaces with FILE_ANY_ACCESS permissions and lacks access checks (such as SeAccessCheck) in its IRP_MJ_CREATE handler. A local, unprivileged attacker can send specially crafted IOCTL requests to the driver to disable process protection, bypass security filtering, or trigger kernel-mode writes to protected system directories via ZwWriteFile. This effectively allows for full local privilege escalation (LPE) to SYSTEM. At the time of disclosure, no patch was confirmed, and the vendor's driver architecture was noted for significant security deficiencies.
Affected products
- Unistal Systems Pvt. Ltd. Protegent 360 2.0.0.4
Timeline
- 2026-05-21: disclosed: Initial research published by DreadSec
- 2026-07-22: advisory: CVE-2026-38765 published to the NVD