CVE-2019-12579: Londontrustmedia Private Internet Access VPN Client

High severity, CVSS 7.8. EPSS: 0.8% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

A vulnerability in the London Trust Media Private Internet Access (PIA) VPN Client v82 for Linux and macOS could allow an authenticated, local attacker to run arbitrary code with elevated privileges. The PIA Linux/macOS binary openvpn_launcher.64 binary is setuid root. This binary accepts several parameters to update the system configuration. These parameters are passed to operating system commands using a "here" document. The parameters are not sanitized, which allow for arbitrary commands to be injected using shell metacharacters. A local unprivileged user can pass special crafted parameters that will be interpolated by the operating system calls.

Affected products

• Londontrustmedia Private Internet Access VPN Client: version 82 only

Published 2019-07-11. Last modified 2026-06-17.