Unquoted Service Path in Prey 1.9.6 Enables Privilege Escalation

Publication date: 2026-01-28

Last updated on: 2026-01-28

Assigner: VulnCheck

Description

Prey 1.9.6 contains an unquoted service path vulnerability that allows local users to potentially execute code with elevated privileges. Attackers can exploit the unquoted path in the CronService to insert malicious code that would execute during application startup or system reboot.

CVSS Scores

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Meta Information

Published

2026-01-28

Last Modified

2026-01-28

Generated

2026-07-06

AI Q&A

2026-01-29

EPSS Evaluated

2026-07-05

NVD

CVE-2020-36986

EUVD

EUVD-2020-30894

Affected Vendors & Products

Vendor	Product	Version / Range
prey	prey	1.9.6

Helpful Resources

Exploitability

CWE

KEV

CWE ID	Description
CWE-428	The product uses a search path that contains an unquoted element, in which the element contains whitespace or other separators. This can cause the product to access resources in a parent path.

Attack-Flow Graph

Executive Summary

This vulnerability is an unquoted service path issue in Prey 1.9.6's CronService. It allows local users to potentially execute code with elevated privileges by exploiting the unquoted path to insert malicious code that runs during application startup or system reboot.

Impact Analysis

An attacker with local access can exploit this vulnerability to execute malicious code with elevated privileges, potentially compromising the system's confidentiality, integrity, and availability.

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