Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Malware & Threats

Researcher Drops Windows 10 Zero-Day Exploit

A researcher has made public technical details, a video and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code for an unpatched local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability affecting Windows.

A researcher has made public technical details, a video and proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit code for an unpatched local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability affecting Windows.

The flaw, disclosed by a researcher who uses the online moniker SandboxEscaper, is related to discretionary access control lists (DACL) and the Task Scheduler, and the exploit has been confirmed to work reliably on a fully patched Windows 10 machine, including 64-bit systems.

The vulnerability allows an attacker with limited privileges to change permissions for a specified file by importing a .job file into the Task Scheduler using schtasks.

Researcher David Longenecker comments on Windows LPE zero-day

SecurityWeek has reached out to Microsoft for comment and will update this article if the company responds. Unless in-the-wild exploitation is detected, the company will likely address the flaw with Patch Tuesday updates.

This is not the first time SandboxEscaper has released the details of a Windows LPE vulnerability before informing Microsoft or giving the company time to release a patch. The expert, who is apparently frustrated (among other things) with Microsoft’s vulnerability reporting process, previously disclosed several other privilege escalation flaws, including another one related to the Task Scheduler in Windows.

One of the vulnerabilities whose details were made public last year by SandboxEscaper ended up being exploited in attacks by a threat group tracked as PowerPool.

SandboxEscaper claims to have discovered four other unpatched flaws, including three LPE issues that allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges and one sandbox escape.

The researcher has offered to sell exploits, but only to “non-western people” and not “for less than 60k.”

UPDATE. Microsoft has sent SecurityWeek the following statement:

“Microsoft has a customer commitment to investigate reported security issues and we will provide updates for impacted devices as soon as possible. We urge finders to practice coordinated vulnerability disclosure to reduce the potential risk to customers.”

Related: Third-Party Patch Released for Windows Zero-Day

Related: Exploit for New Windows Zero-Day Published on Twitter

Related: Microsoft Patches Windows Zero-Day Disclosed via Twitter

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Cybercrime

No one combatting cybercrime knows everything, but everyone in the battle has some intelligence to contribute to the larger knowledge base.

Risk Management

The supply chain threat is directly linked to attack surface management, but the supply chain must be known and understood before it can be...

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Vulnerabilities

Apple has released updates for macOS, iOS and Safari and they all include a WebKit patch for a zero-day vulnerability tracked as CVE-2023-23529.

Vulnerabilities

Patch Tuesday: Microsoft warns vulnerability (CVE-2023-23397) could lead to exploitation before an email is viewed in the Preview Pane.

Application Security

Drupal released updates that resolve four vulnerabilities in Drupal core and three plugins.