Overview
Sandboxie is a well-known isolation software for Windows NT-based operating systems, used by many businesses and private users to create a secure environment for testing and running untrusted applications. This post aims to shed light on a critical vulnerability (CVE-2025-46715) found in versions 1.3.0 to 1.15.11 of Sandboxie. This vulnerability, if exploited, could potentially lead to full system compromise or data leakage.
The importance of addressing this vulnerability cannot be overstated. It impacts a broad range of systems, from private users to businesses, and poses a high risk due to its ability to be exploited by anyone on the system, including low integrity windows processes.
Vulnerability Summary
CVE ID: CVE-2025-46715
Severity: High (7.8 CVSS)
Attack Vector: Local
Privileges Required: Low
User Interaction: None
Impact: System compromise or data leakage
Affected Products
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Product | Affected Versions
Sandboxie | 1.3.0 – 1.15.11
How the Exploit Works
The vulnerability lies in the Api_GetSecureParam function of Sandboxie, which fails to sanitize incoming pointers. This function implicitly trusts that the pointer passed by the user is safe to write to. However, an attacker can pass in a kernel pointer, and the driver subsequently dumps the contents of the Sandboxie (SBIE) registry entry selected to this address. This can be triggered by anyone on the system, including processes with low integrity, and it could lead to system compromise or data leakage.
Conceptual Example Code
The following pseudocode describes a conceptual exploitation of this vulnerability:
// Pseudocode for CVE-2025-46715 exploit
// Start a low integrity process
process lowIntegrityProcess = StartLowIntegrityProcess();
// Obtain a kernel pointer
pointer kernelPointer = GetKernelPointer();
// Call the vulnerable function, passing the kernel pointer
lowIntegrityProcess.Call("Api_GetSecureParam", kernelPointer);
// The driver writes the registry key contents to the kernel pointerIn the above pseudocode, a process with low integrity level is started, a kernel pointer is obtained, and then the Api_GetSecureParam function is called with the kernel pointer as an argument. This results in the driver writing the contents of a specified Sandboxie registry entry to the kernel pointer. It effectively bypasses the isolation provided by Sandboxie, leading to potential system compromise or data leakage.
Recommended Mitigation
Users of Sandboxie are strongly advised to upgrade to version 1.15.12 or later, which contains a patch that fixes this vulnerability. If upgrading is not immediately possible, consider using a Web Application Firewall (WAF) or an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) as a temporary mitigation measure. However, these should not be seen as long-term solutions, and the patch should be applied as soon as possible.