CVE-2025-30414 in Cyber Protect Cloud Agent
Summary
by MITRE • 10/28/2026
Local privilege escalation due to improper authentication. The following products are affected: Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud Agent (Windows) before build 42569, Acronis Cyber Protect 17 (Windows) before build 42587.
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Analysis
by VulDB Data Team • 10/28/2026
The identified vulnerability represents a critical local privilege escalation flaw within the authentication mechanisms of specific versions of Acronis software products deployed on Windows operating systems. Specifically, this issue affects the Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud Agent prior to build number 42569 and the standalone Acronis Cyber Protect version 17 prior to build 42587. The core technical deficiency lies in improper authentication handling, which allows an attacker who has already gained a foothold on the system with low-privileged user credentials to bypass security controls and elevate their access rights to those of higher privilege levels, such as SYSTEM or Administrator. This type of vulnerability is particularly dangerous because it does not require external network exploitation; instead, it relies on physical or logical local access, making it a significant risk in scenarios where endpoint devices are lost, stolen, or compromised by malware that has achieved initial execution under a standard user account.
From a technical perspective, the flaw likely stems from insufficient validation of authentication tokens or improper enforcement of security contexts during specific administrative operations performed by the agent service. In many enterprise backup and protection agents, background services often run with elevated privileges to perform system-level tasks such as disk imaging, file restoration, and registry modifications. If these privileged components fail to strictly verify that the initiating process possesses adequate authorization before executing sensitive functions, an unprivileged user can exploit this gap. By crafting specific requests or manipulating local interfaces exposed by the agent, a malicious actor can trick the service into performing actions under its own high-privilege context rather than the caller's low-privilege context. This mechanism is consistent with common patterns found in CWE Category 287, which covers Improper Authentication and Authorization errors that lead to privilege escalation.
The operational impact of this vulnerability is severe for organizations relying on Acronis solutions for data protection and endpoint security. Once an attacker successfully escalates privileges using this flaw, they gain unrestricted control over the affected system. This level of access enables a wide range of malicious activities, including the installation of persistent backdoors, exfiltration of sensitive corporate data stored locally or in backups managed by the agent, modification or deletion of critical system files, and further lateral movement within the internal network. Since backup agents often hold deep insights into the file systems and configurations of host machines, compromising them with elevated privileges can also lead to the compromise of backed-up data if encryption keys are accessible or if the attacker modifies backup integrity checks. This aligns with MITRE ATT&CK techniques related to Privilege Escalation, specifically T1068 Exploitation for Privilege Escalation, and potentially T1543 Create or Modify System Process if the agent is used to establish persistence at a higher level.
To mitigate this risk, organizations must prioritize immediate patching of all affected endpoints. Administrators should verify that Acronis Cyber Protect Cloud Agents are updated to build 42569 or later and that standalone Acronis Cyber Protect installations are upgraded to version 17 with build number 42587 or higher. These updates contain the necessary code changes to enforce strict authentication checks before allowing privilege elevation. In environments where immediate patching is not feasible due to operational constraints, temporary mitigations should include restricting local administrative rights for standard users and implementing endpoint detection and response solutions that monitor for anomalous process creation patterns associated with known exploitation techniques of this vulnerability type. Regular auditing of service permissions and ensuring the principle of least privilege are applied across all agent configurations will further reduce the attack surface available to potential adversaries seeking to exploit authentication flaws within enterprise security software.