Exploited. On CISA's list since 2021-11-03.
TeamViewer Desktop Bypass Remote Login Vulnerability
CVE-2019-18988 · TeamViewer Desktop · Published 2020-02-07
How bad would it be?
7.0 out of 10
CVSS rates it high.
How likely is it to be used?
4.7%
Estimated chance of exploitation in the next 30 days, higher than 91% of all scored flaws (EPSS, 2026-10-29).
Is it already being used?
Yes
CISA has seen it exploited in real attacks. For US government agencies the fix is deadline passed 1641 days ago (2022-05-03).
What CISA says to do
Apply updates per vendor instructions.
TeamViewer Desktop allows for bypass of remote-login access control because the same AES key is used for different customers' installations. If an attacker were to know this key, they could decrypt protected information stored in registry or configuration files or decryption of the Unattended Access password to the system (which allows for remote login to the system).
What the flaw is
TeamViewer Desktop through 14.7.1965 allows a bypass of remote-login access control because the same key is used for different customers' installations. It used a shared AES key for all installations since at least as far back as v7.0.43148, and used it for at least OptionsPasswordAES in the current version of the product. If an attacker were to know this key, they could decrypt protect information stored in the registry or configuration files of TeamViewer. With versions before v9.x , this allowed for attackers to decrypt the Unattended Access password to the system (which allows for remote login to the system as well as headless file browsing). The latest version still uses the same key for OptionPasswordAES but appears to have changed how the Unattended Access password is stored. While in most cases an attacker requires an existing session on a system, if the registry/configuration keys were stored off of the machine (such as in a file share or online), an attacker could then decrypt the required password to login to the system.
From the NVD.
Fixes and advisories
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CWE-521 · CISA KEV; NVD record: 134c704f-9b21-4f2e-91b3-4a467353bcc0; NVD record: nvd@nist.gov. We have not selected a close learning match for this label.
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Exploited flaws from CISA's KEV catalogue. Chance of exploitation from EPSS by FIRST. Descriptions and scores from the NVD. This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD.