Most of the stories from this week are vulnerabilities dropped before fixes are available, many of them actively being exploited. Strap yourselves in!

Windows Kernel Crypto

The first is CVE-2020-17087, an issue in the Windows Kernel Cryptography Driver. The vulnerable system calls are accessible from unprivileged user-space, and potentially even from inside sandboxed environments. The resulting buffer overflow can result in arbitrary code executing in the kernel context, meaning this is a quick jump to root-level control over a victim system.

What exactly is the code flaw here that’s being attacked? It’s in a bit of buffer allocation logic, inside a binary-to-hex conversion routine. The function accepts an unsigned short length argument. That value is used to calculate the output buffer size, by multiplying it by six, and using an unsigned short to hold that value. See the problem? A sufficiently large value will roll over, and the output buffer size will be too small. It’s a value overflow that leads to a buffer overflow.

Because the problem is being actively exploited, the report has been made public just seven days after discovery. The flaw is still unpatched in Windows 10, as of the time of writing. It also seems to be present as far back as Windows 7, which will likely not receive a fix, being out of support. [Editor’s snarky note: Thanks, closed-source software.] Continue reading “This Week In Security: In The Wild, Through Your NAT, And Brave” →