CVE-2024-29188: Wixtoolset Issues

High severity, CVSS 7.9. EPSS: 0.2% chance of exploitation in the next 30 days.

WiX toolset lets developers create installers for Windows Installer, the Windows installation engine. The custom action behind WiX's `RemoveFolderEx` functionality could allow a standard user to delete protected directories. `RemoveFolderEx` deletes an entire directory tree during installation or uninstallation. It does so by recursing every subdirectory starting at a specified directory and adding each subdirectory to the list of directories Windows Installer should delete. If the setup author instructed `RemoveFolderEx` to delete a per-user folder from a per-machine installer, an attacker could create a directory junction in that per-user folder pointing to a per-machine, protected directory. Windows Installer, when executing the per-machine installer after approval by an administrator, would delete the target of the directory junction. This vulnerability is fixed in 3.14.1 and 4.0.5.

Affected products

• Wixtoolset Issues: before 3.14.1 (fixed in 3.14.1); from 4.0.0, before 4.0.5 (fixed in 4.0.5)

Published 2024-03-24. Last modified 2026-06-17.