Category: Windows OS

Windows 10 Sandbox has a Vulnerability inside

A researcher discovered a new zero-day vulnerability in most Windows 10 editions, which allows creating files in restricted areas of the operating system.

Exploiting the flaw is trivial and attackers can use it to further their attack after initial infection of the target host, albeit it works only on machines with Hyper-V feature enabled.

An unprivileged user can create an arbitrary file in ‘system32,’ a restricted folder holding vital files for Windows operating system and installed software.

However, this works only if Hyper-V is already active, something that limits the range of targets since the option is disabled by default and is present in Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education.

Hyper-V is Microsoft’s solution to creating virtual machines (VM) on Windows 10. Depending on the physical resources available on the host, it can run at least three virtual instances.

Given sufficient hardware resources, Hyper-V can run large VMs with 32 processors and 512GB of RAM. An average user user may not have a use for such a virtual machine but they may run Windows Sandbox, an isolated environment for executing programs or loading websites that are not trusted, without risking to infect the normal Windows operating system.

Microsoft introduced Windows Sandbox with the May 2019 Update, in Windows 10 version 1903. Turning on this feature automatically enables Hyper-V.

To demonstrate the vulnerability researchers created in \system32 an empty file named phoneinfo.dll. Making any changes in this location requires elevated privileges but these restrictions are irrelevant when Hyper-V is active.

The creator of the file is also the owner, an attacker can use this to place malicious code inside that would be execute with elevated privileges when needed.

CERT/CC vulnerability analyst Will Dormann confirmed that the vulnerability exists and that exploiting it requires literally no effort from an attacker on the host.

Although this vulnerability is easy to exploit there are more dangerous issues in Windows 10 that Microsoft should address. This is one reason he decided to make it public and not report it through Microsoft’s bug bounty program.

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CVE 2020-1472 – Exploit goes wild

The CVE-2020-1472 flaw is an elevation of privilege that resides in the Netlogon. The Netlogon service is an Authentication Mechanism used in the Windows Client Authentication Architecture which verifies logon requests, and it registers, authenticates, and locates Domain Controllers.

“An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when an attacker establishes a vulnerable Netlogon secure channel connection to a domain controller, using the Netlogon Remote Protocol (MS-NRPC).

An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could run a specially crafted application on a device on the network.” reads the advisory published by Microsoft.

“To exploit the vulnerability, an unauthenticated attacker would be required to use MS-NRPC to connect to a domain controller to obtain domain administrator access.”

“By forging an authentication token for specific Netlogon functionality, he was able to call a function to set the computer password of the Domain Controller to a known value. After that, the attacker can use this new password to take control over the domain controller and steal credentials of a domain admin.”

“The vulnerability stems from a flaw in a cryptographic authentication scheme used by the Netlogon Remote Protocol, which among other things can be used to update computer passwords.”

An attacker could exploit the vulnerability to impersonate any computer, including the domain controller itself, and execute remote procedure calls on their behalf.

An attacker could also exploit the flaw to disable security features in the Netlogon authentication process and change a computer’s password on the domain controller’s Active Directory.

“By simply sending a number of Netlogon messages in which various fields are filled with zeroes, an attacker can change the computer password of the domain controller that is stored in the AD. This can then be used to obtain domain admin credentials and then restore the original DC password.”

“This attack has a huge impact: it basically allows any attacker on the local network to completely compromise the Windows domain. The attack is completely unauthenticated”

The ZeroLogon attack could be exploited by threat actors to deliver malware and ransomware on the target network.

The only limitation on how to carry out a Zerologon attack is that the attacker must have access to the target network.

Researchers released a Python script that uses the Impacket library to test vulnerability for the Zerologon exploit, it could be used by admins to determine if their domain controller is still vulnerable.

August 2020 Patch Tuesday security updates only temporarily address the vulnerability making Netlogon security features mandatory for the Netlogon authentication process. This has the severity score of 10

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Patch Tuesday September 2020

As part of this month’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft today released a fresh batch of security updates to fix a total of 129 newly discovered security vulnerabilities affecting various versions of its Windows operating systems and related software.

23 are listed as critical, 105 are important, and one is moderate in severity

None of the security vulnerabilities the tech giant patched in September are listed as being publicly known or under active attack at the time of release or at least not in knowledge of Microsoft.

A memory corruption vulnerability (CVE-2020-16875) in Microsoft Exchange software is worth highlighting all the critical flaws. The exploitation of this flaw could allow an attacker to run arbitrary code at the SYSTEM level by sending a specially crafted email to a vulnerable Exchange Server.

“A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Microsoft Exchange software when the software fails to properly handle objects in memory,” Microsoft explains. “An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts.”

Microsoft also patched two critical remote code execution flaws in Windows Codecs Library; both exist in the way that Microsoft Windows Codecs Library handles objects in memory, but while one (CVE-2020-1129) could be exploited to obtain information to compromise the user’s system further, the other (CVE-2020-1319) could be used to take control of the affected system.

Besides these, two remote code execution flaws affect the on-premises implementation of Microsoft Dynamics 365, but both require the attacker to be authenticated.

Microsoft also patched six critical remote code execution vulnerabilities in SharePoint and one in SharePoint Server. While exploiting the vulnerability in SharePoint Server requires authentication, other flaws in SharePoint do not.

Other critical flaws the tech giant patched this month reside in Windows, Windows Media Audio Decoder, Windows Text Service Module, Windows Camera Codec Pack, Visual Studio, Scripting Engine, Microsoft COM for Windows, Microsoft Browser, and Graphics Device Interface.

Most of these vulnerabilities allow information disclosure, the elevation of privilege, and cross-Site Scripting. Some also lead to remote code execution attacks. In contrast, others allow security feature bypass, spoofing, tampering, and denial of service attacks.

Windows users and system administrators are highly advised to apply the latest security patches as soon as possible to keep cybercriminals and hackers away from taking control of their computers.
For installing security updates, head on to Settings → Update & security → Windows Update → Check for updates or install the updates manually.

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Patch Tuesday Preview September 2020

There were some reported issues on the Windows 10 version 1903, 1909, and 2004 updates. Applying the updates for KB 4565351 or KB 4566782 resulted in a failure for many users on automatic updates with return codes/explanations that were not very helpful. Mitigation to these issues will be released

Reminder for the EOL of Windows Embedded Standard 7 coming up on October Patch Tuesday. Microsoft will offer continued support for critical and important security updates just like they did for Windows 7 and Server 2008.

These updates will be available for three years through October 2023. Microsoft also provided an update on the ‘sunset’ of the legacy Edge browser in March 2021.

Microsoft 365 apps and services will no longer support IE 11 starting in August 2021. They made it clear IE 11 is not going away anytime soon, but the new Edge is required for a modern browser experience.

September 2020 Patch Tuesday forecast

  • Standard operating system updates, with the large Office and individual application updates release last month expect both smaller and more limited set this time.
  • Service stack updates (SSUs) are hit or miss each month. The last required update was released in May. Expect to see a few in the mix once again.
  • Google Chrome 85 was released earlier week, but we may see a security release if they have any last-minute fixes for us.
  • Mozilla security update for Firefox and Thunderbird. The last security release was back on August 25.

Remote security management of both company-provided and user-attached systems provides many challenges. With a projected light set of updates this month, hopefully tying up valuable bandwidth isn’t one of those challenges.

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