Thursday, December 23, 2021

Micropatching "ms-officecmd" Remote Code Execution (CVE-2021-43905)

 


by Mitja Kolsek, the 0patch Team

 

Update 1/5/2022: Microsoft changed their mind and issued a CVE ID for this vulnerability: CVE-2021-43905. The latest version of LocalBridge also no longer recognizes the ms-officecmd: URI scheme.

Earlier this month, security company Positive Security published a detailed analysis of a critical vulnerability they had discovered in the handling of the "ms-officecmd" URL handler. In short, this vulnerability allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on user's computer when user visited a malicious web page with a browser or opened a link provided to them in documents or messaging applications.

Positive Security have responsibly reported this bug to Microsoft, who fixed it without assigning it a CVE ID, reportedly because "Changes to websites, downloads through Defender, or through the Store normally do not get a CVE attached in the same way. In this case the fix did not go out through Windows Update.

Having a fix delivered though an alternative mechanism instead of Windows Update is not unprecedented in Windows, but can depend on assumptions that may not always be true. In this case, the fix was delivered through Windows Store - but only if the AppX Deployment Service was running. This service (AppXSVC) is enabled on Windows 10 by default and gets started when needed, but a quick Google search finds many people asking how to disable it, some presumably doing so. In addition, there is no need to have Windows Store working on users' computers in a typical enterprise environment, and in fact Microsoft provides instructions for blocking such access.

The situation is therefore such that a remote code execution vulnerability with no CVE ID assigned and official fix issued may have remained unfixed on an unknown number of computers worldwide. To make things worse, the DLL that was fixed (AppBridge.dll) has no version information, making it hard for anyone to determine whether their computer is vulnerable or not.

 

No version information for AppBridge.dll

 

The Vulnerability

The vulnerability is nicely described in Positive Security's blog post, so let's just focus on the crux here: various Windows applications such as Office, Teams or Skype register the "ms-officecmd" URL handler, which makes it possible to launch these applications by simply opening a URL provided in a hyperlink or visiting a web page. This handler parses the entire URL to determine which application is to be launched, and which file it should open.

This filename value in an "ms-officecmd" URL is problematic because it gets passed on to the launched application in form of a command-line argument. An application may, however, happily accept various additional arguments, and the vulnerability in question allows these to be sneaked in through the filename value. Teams, for example, is an Electron-based application and accepts the --gpu-launcher argument that launches any other app - as specified by the attacker.

Consequently, visiting a malicious web page while having Teams installed could launch malware on your computer. Whether you would have to okay a not-too-security-alert-looking dialog or not depended on the browser.


Microsoft's Fix

Microsoft addressed this issue in two places:

  1. When the filename value points to a file (instead of a URL on the web), the new code tries to open such file locally and only continues with launching the application if that succeeds. This blocks maliciously injected arguments because a file that would match the malicious filename would not be present on user's computer and therefore couldn't be opened. (Side note: a malicious file could also be stored on a remote share and actually contain various unusual characters, so we're not entirely sure about the completeness of this approach.)
  2. When the application is launched, the supplied filename value is enclosed in double quotes to force it to be parsed as a single argument.

 

After this fix was issued, Positive Security researchers found it to be incomplete, still allowing for argument injection with web-based filenames, such as launching Word with the /q argument like this:

"filename": "https://example.com/\" /q"

Those familiar with injection attacks will notice that even if the string is enclosed in double quotes, the double quote that is already in the string will terminate the starting quote and allow for the introduction of another argument. Classic injection attack.

Fortunately, at least Teams won't launch with a web-based URL argument like this but since many Office applications can be launched via "ms-officecmd" URL, the remaining exploitability of this issue can only be assessed with extensive analysis.

 

Our Micropatch

Our approach at this issue was more classic in terms of preventing injections. We replicated Microsoft's 2nd code change, enclosing the entire filename value in double quotes before it gets sent to ShellExecute, but we also added a check for existence of double quotes in the filename value and flat out refuse to launch the application if any are found. A double quote cannot be part of a Windows file name (it's one of the forbidden characters), and if someone wants to use double quotes in a web-based URL, they should encode them as %22.

Our patch was written for 32-bit and 64-bit AppBridge.dll that was delivered to Windows machines through Windows Store in October 2020. This is the last vulnerable version, and was subsequently replaced with a fixed version in June 2021. Our patch will therefore only get applied if you had Windows Store enabled in October 2020, and disabled it some time before June 2021. We expect some users may have older, or much older, versions of AppBridge.dll installed due to having disabled Windows Store earlier. In absence of AppBridge.dll version information, we can only recommend locally testing your exploitability by copy-pasting the following URL to your web browser on a machine with Microsoft Teams installed, and seeing if a calculator gets launched:


ms-officecmd:{
   "LocalProviders.LaunchOfficeAppForResult": {
       "details": {
           "appId": 5,
           "name": "irrelevant",
           "discovered": {
               "command": "irrelevant"
           }
       },
       "filename": "a:/b/ --disable-gpu-sandbox --gpu-launcher=\"C:\\Windows\\System32\\cmd /c calc && \""
   }
}


Here is a video showing how 0patch prevents the above URL from launching calculator.



Micropatch Availability

This micropatch requires a 0patch PRO or Enterprise license as it cannot be considered a 0day anymore. To determine if it applies to your computer at all, you can install 0patch Agent with a free account and see if the patch appears under relevant patches.

If you're not sure whether you're vulnerable or not, try to locate AppBridge.dll on your computer: it should be in a folder like C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\Microsoft.MicrosoftOfficeHub_[version]_x64__8wekyb3d8bbwe. (Note that the folder is only accessible to admins so running a full disk search as a non-admin user won't work.)

Once you've located the file, contact us at sales@0patch.com and provide the exact file size and modification date of file AppBridge.dll and the name of the folder you found it in. For the record, the vulnerable AppBridge.dll on our test systems was in a folder version 18.2008.12711.0.


We'd like to thank researchers from Positive Security for finding this issue and sharing details, which allowed us to create a micropatch and protect our users. We'd also like to thank Will Dormann for additional analysis of this issue.

To learn more about 0patch, please visit our Help Center.

 

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Free Micropatches for the "InstallerFileTakeOver" 0day (CVE-2021-43883)

by Mitja Kolsek, the 0patch Team

 

Update 12/21/2021: Microsoft provided an official fix for this issue on December 14, and assigned it CVE-2021-43883. Our associated micropatches thus ceased being free and now require a PRO license.

Wow, this is the third 0day found by the same researcher we're patching in the last two weeks.

Abdelhamid Naceri, a talented security researcher, has been keeping us busy with 0days this year. In January we micropatched a local privilege escalation in Windows Installer they had found (already fixed by Microsoft), and in the last two weeks we fixed an incompletely patched local privilege escalation in User Profile Service and a local privilege escalation in Mobile Device Management Service (still 0days at the time of this writing).

Ten days ago, Abdelhamid tweeted a link to their GitHub repository containing a proof of concept for another unpatched vulnerability in Windows Installer. The vulnerability allows a local non-admin user to overwrite an existing file to which they do not have write access, and then arbitrarily change its content. This can easily be turned into local privilege escalation by overwriting a trusted system executable file with one's own code - as demonstrated by Abdelhamid's POC, which launches a command line window as Local System.

According to Cisco Talos, this vulnerability is being exploited in the wild

Note that this 0day is being referenced by multiple sources as a bypass to CVE-2021-41379, but the researcher who found it claims that is not the case.

 

The Vulnerability

The vulnerability lies in the way Windows Installer creates a RBF (Rollback File), a file that stores the content of all deleted or modified files during the installation process, so that in case rollback is needed, these files can be restored to their originals. The RBF file is created either in folder C:\Config.msi or in folder C:\Windows\Installer\Config.msi, based on some logic that we admittedly don't fully understand. In any case, should the RBF file be created in folder C:\Windows\Installer\Config.msi *, it later gets moved to a known location in initiating user's Temp folder where the files' permissions are also modified to give the user write access. Abdelhamid noticed that a symbolic link can be created in place of the incoming RBF file, which will result in moving the RBF file from  C:\Windows\Installer\Config.msi to some other user-chosen file on the system. Since Windows Installer is running as Local System, any file writable by Local System can be overwritten and made writable by the local user.

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to see that taking over an executable file that is being used by a privileged process can get one's code executed with such process' privileges. This Twitter thread by Will Dormann provides various options to achieve the same.

* In case the RBF file is created in C:\config.msi, the described file move does not take place, and the exploit can't work. Interestingly, Abdelhamid's 0day we had fixed in January was targeting the other rollback file, RBS or Rollback Script, which - to the contrary - had to be created in C:\Config.msi instead of in C:\Windows\Installer\Config.msi, to be exploitable. Things are weird in the Windows Installer world.


Our Micropatch

Our micropatch targets the RBF file move operation, whereby it checks that the destination path does not contain any junctions or links. If it does, we consider it an exploitation attempt, and the operation is canceled. The original code then "thinks" the file move operation has failed for some reason.

Here is the video of our micropatch in action. Without the micropatch, exploit works and a command line window is launched as Local System; with the micropatch, the code we correct in msi.dll determines that destination path contains a symbolic link, aborts the file move operation and triggers an "Exploit blocked" event.



Micropatch Availability

This micropatch was written for: 

  1. Windows 10 v21H1 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  2. Windows 10 v20H2 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  3. Windows 10 v2004 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  4. Windows 10 v1909 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  5. Windows 10 v1903 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  6. Windows 10 v1809 (32 & 64 bit) updated with May 2021 Updates
  7. Windows 10 v1803 (32 & 64 bit) updated with May 2021 Updates
  8. Windows 10 v1709 (32 & 64 bit) updated with October 2020 Updates 
  9. Windows 7 ESU (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  10. Windows Server 2019 updated with November 2021 Updates
  11. Windows Server 2016 updated with November 2021 Updates
  12. Windows Server 2012 R2 updated with November 2021 Updates
  13. Windows Server 2012 updated with November 2021 Updates
  14. Windows Server 2008 R2 ESU (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
 
Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2 without ESU (Extended Security Updates), which we have security-adopted, do not appear to be vulnerable.

Note that Abdelhamid's POC also works on Windows 11 and likely Windows Server 2022, but we don't support these Windows versions yet. 
 
 
Micropatches for this vulnerability will be free until Microsoft has issued an official fix. If you want to use them, create a free account in 0patch Central, then install and register 0patch Agent from 0patch.com. Everything else will happen automatically. No computer reboots will be needed.
 

We'd like to thank Abdelhamid Naceri for finding this issue and sharing details, which allowed us to create a micropatch and protect our users.

To learn more about 0patch, please visit our Help Center.

Friday, November 26, 2021

Micropatching Unpatched Local Privilege Escalation in Mobile Device Management Service (CVE-2021-24084 / 0day)

 


by Mitja Kolsek, the 0patch Team

 

Update 12/21/2021: Microsoft provided an official fix for this issue on December 14. Our associated micropatches thus ceased being free and now require a PRO license.

Update 3/21/2022: Microsoft's fix for this issue turned out to be flawed. We ported our micropatches to all affected Windows versions and made them all FREE for everyone again.

In June 2021, security researcher Abdelhamid Naceri published a blog post about an "unpatched information disclosure" vulnerability in Windows. The post details the mechanics of the issue and its exploitation, allowing a non-admin Windows user to read arbitrary files even if they do not have permissions to do so. The exploit namely copies file(s) from a chosen location into a CAB archive that the user can then open and read.

Abdelhamid's blog post also provides the timeline of reporting the vulnerability to Microsoft through ZDI in October 2020, Microsoft assigning a CVE ID to the issue and allegedly planning to fix it in April 2021, and the latter not happening in April. Or June. Or July or August or September or October.

While we had noticed Abdelhamid's June disclosure, it didn't seem to be a critical enough issue for micropatching, as we generally don't patch information disclosure bugs.

In November, however, Abdelhamid pointed out that this - still unpatched - bug may not be just an information disclosure issue, but a local privilege escalation vulnerability. Namely, as HiveNightmare/SeriousSAM has taught us, an arbitrary file disclosure can* be upgraded to local privilege escalation if you know which files to take and what to do with them. We confirmed this by using the procedure described in this blog post by Raj Chandel in conjunction with Abdelhamid's bug - and being able to run code as local administrator.

(*) Two conditions need to be met in order for the local privilege escalation to work:

  1. System protection must be enabled on drive C, and at least one restore point created. Whether system protection is enabled or disabled by default depends on various parameters.  
  2. At least one local administrator account must be enabled on the computer, or at least one "Administrators" group member's credentials cached


The Vulnerability

The vulnerable functionality resides under the "Access work or school" settings and can be triggered by clicking on "Export your management log files" and confirming by pressing "Export". At that point, the Device Management Enrollment Service is triggered, running as Local System. This service first copies some log files to the C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\MDMDiagnostics folder, and then packages them into a CAB file whereby they're temporarily copied to C:\Windows\Temp folder. The resulting CAB file is then stored in the C:\Users\Public\Public Documents\MDMDiagnostics folder, where the user can freely access it.

It is the copying to C:\Windows\Temp folder that is vulnerable. Namely, a local attacker can create a soft link (junction) there with a predictable file name that will be used in the above-described process, pointing to some file or folder they want to have copied to the CAB file. Since the Device Management Enrollment Service runs as Local System, it can read any system file that the attacker can't.

Abdelhamid's POC targets the kernel dump files in folder C:\Windows\LiveKernelReports to demonstrate the issue, while we used SAM, SECURITY and SYSTEM files from a restore point folder to achieve local privilege escalation.

The vulnerability has CVE-2021-24084 assigned, but we still consider it a "0day" as no official vendor fix is available.


Our Micropatch

Abdelhamid's blog post suggested that user impersonation during CAB file creation would resolve the issue. While we agree with that, we were concerned that might break some use cases and rather decided to check for the presence of junctions during CAB file creation.

The function we patched is CollectFileEntry inside mdmdiagnostics.dll. This is the function that copies files from C:\Windows\Temp folder into the CAB file, and can be tricked into reading some other files instead.

Our patch is placed immediately before the call to CopyFileW that opens the source file for copying, and uses the GetFinalPathNameByHandleW function to determine whether any junctions or other types of links are used in the path. If they are, our patch makes it look as it the CopyFileW call has failed, thereby silently bypassing the copying of any file that doesn't actually reside in C:\Windows\Temp.

Here is the IDA graph showing our applied patch (green code blocks are patch code; blue code block is a trampoline with the original code).  

 



Micropatch Availability

This micropatch was written for: 

  1. Windows 10 v21H1 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  2. Windows 10 v20H2 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  3. Windows 10 v2004 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  4. Windows 10 v1909 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  5. Windows 10 v1903 (32 & 64 bit) updated with November 2021 Updates
  6. Windows 10 v1809 (32 & 64 bit) updated with May 2021 Updates
 
Windows Servers are not affected, as the vulnerable functionality does not exist there. While some similar diagnostics tools exist on servers, they are being executed under the launching user's identity, and therefore cannot be exploited.

Windows 10 v1803 and older Windows 10 versions don't seem to be affected either. While they do have the "Access work or school" functionality, it behaves differently and cannot be exploited this way. Windows 7 does not have the "Access work or school" functionality at all.

Note that Abdelhamid has also published a related POC for Windows 11 but that POC is actually exploiting a different vulnerability. 

 
Micropatches for this vulnerability will be free until Microsoft has issued an official fix. If you want to use them, create a free account in 0patch Central, then install and register 0patch Agent from 0patch.com. Everything else will happen automatically. No computer reboots will be needed.
 

We'd like to thank Abdelhamid Naceri for finding this issue and sharing details, which allowed us to create a micropatch and protect our users.

To learn more about 0patch, please visit our Help Center.


 


 

 

Friday, November 19, 2021

Micropatch For Remote Code Execution by DNS Administrators (CVE-2021-40469)



by Mitja Kolsek, the 0patch Team

 

This is a story of a publicly known remote code execution vulnerability that somehow got ignored and mostly overlooked for four and a half years, meanwhile rediscovered a number of times, weaponized, and finally fixed this October with an unexpected acknowledgment.

Back in May 2017, security researcher Shay Ber published details about a vulnerability affecting Windows DNS Service. They found that any member of the DNSAdmins domain group can use their privileges to get the computer running the DNS Service to run arbitrary code as Local System - which equals a complete takeover of said computer. Since many domain controllers are running the DNS Service, this could mean a complete Windows domain takeover.

Note that DNSAdmins is a powerful group: being able to change domain DNS configuration allows one to cause all sorts of problems - but it doesn't automatically allow them to take over the domain. Typically, a DNS administrator is not allowed to login to the computer running the DNS Service (often a domain controller), and configures DNS from their own workstation using a DNS management tool that utilizes remote procedure calls (RPC).

Shay noticed that legitimate functionality of these remote procedure calls, conveniently made available by the Windows dnscmd.exe tool, can be used to remotely configure a DNS Service to load an arbitrary DLL from a network share and execute its code. This is due to the DNS Service checking, upon startup, the presence of registry value ServerLevelPluginDll and, if it exists, loading the DLL from the path specified therein. This value could be set remotely using the dnscmd.exe tool by members of the DNSAdmins group.

After reporting this to Microsoft, Shay was told that "it [would] be fixed by basically only allowing DC administrators to change the ServerLevelPluginDll registry key, and that it [would] be possible to toggle this feature off in future releases."

Although in their write-up Shay generously described the issue as "a cute feature (certainly not a bug!)", it was undeniably a privilege escalation - from non domain admin to domain admin - as well as a remote code execution issue - from computer one can run code on to computer one can't normally run code on.

In any case, the issue got largely forgotten, likely because of its "not a bug" classification, until another security researcher Sean Metcalf brought it up in their article a year and a half later. Fourteen months after that, security researcher Dhiraj Sharma revisited the original article and published a new write-up. Further nine months of nothing happening later, an exploit module got added to Metasploit, making it easier for attackers of all hat colors to exploit this issue. We're not done yet. In April and May 2021, security researcher Phackt wrote a two-part analysis of this issue, further dissecting it and shedding light on the "why" and offering an alternative for using the overly-permissive DNSAdmins group

Finally, this October's Windows Updates brought a fix, assigned the issue CVE-2021-40469, and, surprisingly, acknowledged (only) Yuki Chen, a regular reporter of Windows vulnerabilities, for finding and reporting this to Microsoft.

What a ride.

 

Microsoft's Fix

Microsoft's fix delivered by October 2021 updates did what was promised back in 2017: it introduced a new registry key HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\DNS\InternalParameters with permissions only allowing administrators to modify its content. The ServerLevelPluginDll value has been moved from the Parameters key to this new key, making it impossible to change it with permissions provided by the DNSAdmins group. A decent fix, as far as we can tell.

The only thing not fixed were affected Windows servers that aren't receiving official Windows updates anymore: Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2008 without Extended Security Updates. This is where we come in.


Our Micropatch

Our micropatch, the whole 19 CPU instructions of it, takes a bit different approach compared to Microsoft's fix. When applied (enabled), our micropatch forces the DNS Service to ignore the ServerLevelPluginDll value even if it's present in the registry. Based on the absolute absence of hits when googling for ServerLevelPluginDll and filtering out articles about exploiting this value, we assess that very few organizations are using this feature, so simply removing it - which our patch effectively does - is the optimal approach. This decision was in line with our goal of using minimal amount of code to fix the vulnerability. However, should a customer report that they're using this feature, we'll replace the patch with one that is functionally closer to Microsoft's.

Source code of our micropatch:



MODULE_PATH "..\Affected_Modules\dns.exe_6.1.7601.24437_Srv2008R2_64bit_NoESU\dns.exe"
PATCH_ID 707
PATCH_FORMAT_VER 2
VULN_ID 7208
PLATFORM win64

patchlet_start
    PATCHLET_ID 1
    PATCHLET_TYPE 2
    PATCHLET_OFFSET 0x411a7
    N_ORIGINALBYTES 5
    JUMPOVERBYTES 0
    PIT msvcrt.dll!_wcsicmp,dns.exe!0x41171
    
    code_start
        push rdi          ; storing register on stack to keep their values
        push rcx
        push rdx
        push r8
        push r9
       
        call VAR          ; trick to get address of string on stack
        dw __utf16__('ServerLevelPluginDll'), 0
    VAR:
        pop rdx           ; rdx points to string
'ServerLevelPluginDll'
        mov rcx, rdx      ; rcx points to
string 'ServerLevelPluginDll'
        mov rdx, r12      ; rdx points to name of registry value that
                          ; is currently being read from registry
        sub rsp, 20h      ; create home space for the 64bit call
        call PIT__wcsicmp ; compare strings case insensitive
        add rsp, 20h      ; abandon home space
       
        pop r9            ; restoring register values from stack
        pop r8
        pop rdx
        pop rcx
        pop rdi
       
        cmp rax, 0        ; were strings equal?
        je PIT_0x41171    ; if so, bypass reading from registry
       
    code_end
    
patchlet_end

   

 

And the video of our patch in action.



This micropatch was written for: 

  1. Windows Server 2008 (updated with January 2020 Updates - latest before end of support) 
  2. Windows Server 2008 R2 (updated with January 2020 Updates - latest before end of support)

 

To obtain the micropatch and have it applied on your computer(s) along with other micropatches included in a 0patch license, create an account in 0patch Central, install 0patch Agent and register it to your account, then purchase an appropriate 0patch license. Note that no computer restart is needed for installing the agent or applying/un-applying any 0patch micropatch. For a 0patch trial, contact sales@0patch.com

We'd like to thank Shay Ber for finding this issue and sharing details, which allowed us to create a micropatch and protect our users. Thank you also to Yuki Chen, who appears to have been the one finally pushing the official vendor fix out the door.

To learn more about 0patch, please visit our Help Center.


 


 

 

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Micropatching Incompletely Patched Local Privilege Escalation in User Profile Service (CVE-2021-34484)

 


 

by Mitja Kolsek, the 0patch Team

 

Update 12/21/2021: December Windows Updates did not bring a fix for this 0day. Our associated micropatches thus remain free.

Update 1/12/2022: January 2022 Windows Updates brought a fix for this issue. Our associated micropatches are now part of the PRO plan.

August 2021 Windows Updates brought a fix for CVE-2021-34484, found and reported by security researcher Abdelhamid Naceri. This vulnerability was considered by Microsoft to be an "arbitrary directory deletion" bug, allowing a locally logged-on attacker to delete a folder on the computer. This, combined with the fact that the attacker must also have credentials of another user who can locally log on to the same computer, made the bug seem fairly uninteresting.

However, Abdelhamid subsequently reviewed Microsotf's fix and found it to be incomplete, bypassable with a small change to the attack script. Furthermore, he confirmed the vulnerability was more impactful than described in Microsoft's advisory, namely enabling local privilege escalation from a regular user to System. Consequently, a write-up and proof of concept were published, which allowed us to analyze the vulnerability and create a micropatch for it. 

 

The Vulnerability

The vulnerability lies in the User Profile Service, specifically in the code responsible for creating a temporary user profile folder in case the user's original profile folder is damaged or locked for some reason. Abdelhamid found that the process (executed as Local System) of copying folders and files from user's original profile folder to the temporary one can be attacked with symbolic links to create attacker-writable folders in a system location from which a subsequently launched system process would load and execute attacker's DLL.

The crux of the attack is in quickly creating a symbolic link in the temporary user profile folder (C:\Users\TEMP) so that when the User Profile Service copies a folder from user's original profile folder, it will end up creating a folder somewhere else - where the attacker would normally not have permissions to create one.

Microsoft, even though believing the vulnerability only allowed for deletion of an arbitrarily "symlinked" folder, made a conceptually correct fix: it checked whether the destination folder under C:\Users\TEMP was a symbolic link, and aborted the operation if so. The incompleteness of this fix, as noticed by Abdelhamid, was in the fact that the symbolic link need not be in the upper-most folder (which Microsoft's fix checked), but in any folder along the destination path.

Admittedly, this bug was not easy to reproduce, as it requires winning a race condition and that depends on lots of factors. Nevertheless, an actual attacker would have an unlimited number of attempts and would not be dismayed by that. A more significant obstacle for them would be obtaining additional user's credentials, which seem to be needed in order to exploit this vulnerability. As stated by Abdelhamid, "it might be possible to do it without knowing someone else password." but until someone finds a way to do so, we shall assume this to be a requirement.

While this vulnerability already has its CVE ID (CVE-2021-33742), we're considering it to be without an official vendor fix and therefore a "0day".


Our Micropatch

Our micropatch extends the incomplete security check from Microsoft's fix to the entire destination path by calling GetFinalPathNameByHandle and thus resolving any symbolic links it may contain. Then, by comparing the original path and the "resolved" path, it determines whether any symbolic links are present; if not, original code execution is resumed, otherwise the creation of a temporary user profile is aborted.

 

Our micropatch (green code blocks) injected in the original code of profext.dll.


Source code of our micropatch:



MODULE_PATH "..\Affected_Modules\profext.dll_10.0.19041.1165_Win10-2004_64-bit_u202110\profext.dll"
PATCH_ID 708
PATCH_FORMAT_VER 2
VULN_ID 7184
PLATFORM win64

patchlet_start
  PATCHLET_ID 1
  PATCHLET_TYPE 2
  PATCHLET_OFFSET 0x15065
  N_ORIGINALBYTES 5
  JUMPOVERBYTES 0
  PIT Kernel32.dll!GetFinalPathNameByHandleW,Kernel32.dll!LocalAlloc,msvcrt.dll!_wcsicmp,profext.dll!0x150c8,Kernel32.dll!LocalFree
  code_start
                         ; original path is on rbx
    mov rcx, 0           ; LMEM_FIXED
    mov rdx, 208h        ; number of bytes to allocate
    sub rsp, 20h         ; home space
    call PIT_LocalAlloc  ; allocates the specified number of bytes on the heap
    add rsp, 20h         ; restore stack pointer
    
    mov rcx, [rsp+40h]   ; hFile, handle to file
    push rax             ; save pointer to heap buffer for _wcsicmp
    push rax             ; save pointer to heap buffer for LocalFree
    mov rdx, rax         ; pointer to allocated memory
    mov r9d, 0           ; type of returned result, FILE_NAME_NORMALIZED
    mov r8d, 208h        ; max length of Windows path, the size of lpszFilePath
    sub rsp, 20h         ; home space
    call PIT_GetFinalPathNameByHandleW ; retrieve final path for the specified file
    add rsp, 20h         ; restore stack pointer
    
    pop rcx              ; pointer to allocated buffer
    lea rcx, [rcx+8]     ; GetFinalPathNameByHandleW returns path with \\?\, we get rid of that
    mov rdx, rbx         ; current path
    sub rsp, 20h         ; home space
    call PIT__wcsicmp    ; compare two null terminated paths
    add rsp, 20h         ; restore stack pointer
    cmp rax, 0           ; are strings equal?
    je END               ; if equal, then no links exist, proceed with normal execution
    
    pop rcx              ; pointer to allocated buffer
    call PIT_LocalFree   ; free allocated buffer
    call PIT_ExploitBlocked ; report exploit attempt
    jmp PIT_0x150c8      ; error out
    
  END:
    pop rcx              ; pointer to allocated buffer
    call PIT_LocalFree   ; free allocated buffer
                         ; and continue with normal execution
  code_end
patchlet_end
   

 

And the video of our micropatch in action. Without the micropatch, exploit works; with the micropatch, corrected code in User Profile Service determines that a destination path contains a symbolic link and aborts the creation of a temporary profile folder.



[Update 11/16/2021: The list below updated with additional supported platforms]

This micropatch was written for: 

  1. Windows 10 v21H1 (32 & 64 bit) updated with October or November 2021 Updates
  2. Windows 10 v20H2 (32 & 64 bit) updated with October or November 2021 Updates
  3. Windows 10 v2004 (32 & 64 bit) updated with October or November 2021 Updates
  4. Windows 10 v1909 (32 & 64 bit) updated with October or November 2021 Updates
  5. Windows 10 v1903 (32 & 64 bit) updated with October or November 2021 Updates
  6. Windows 10 v1809 (32 & 64 bit) updated with May 2021 Updates
  7. Windows Server 2019 64 bit updated with October or November 2021 Updates
  8. Windows Server 2016 64 bit updated with November 2021 Updates
While some older Windows versions also seem to be theoretically affected, the vulnerable code is different there, making the window for winning the race condition extremely narrow and probably unexploitable.
 
 
Micropatches for this vulnerability will be free until Microsoft has issued an official fix. If you want to use them, create a free account in 0patch Central, then install and register 0patch Agent from 0patch.com. Everything else will happen automatically. No computer reboots will be needed.
 

We'd like to thank Abdelhamid Naceri for finding this issue and sharing details, which allowed us to create a micropatch and protect our users. Thanks also to Will Dormann for useful tips on reproducing this issue.

To learn more about 0patch, please visit our Help Center.


 


 

Friday, October 29, 2021

A New 0patch Experience



Last week we updated 0patch Server and 0patch Central, which brought several new features and capabilities. Let's take a quick look at them:


  • Subscription management: Users can now manage their subscriptions in 0patch Central, including turning auto-renewal on or off, changing the number of licenses in a subscription, switching between annual and monthly payments, and canceling a subscription. Managed service providers can use the "Renew of one term" feature for renewing a license once their customer has committed to another term.

  • Monthly licenses: Before, 0patch was only available as an annual subscription service. From now on, we also support monthly subscriptions, allowing customers to up-scale and down-scale their license count on a monthly basis according to their needs. (A minimum of 20 licenses is required for a monthly subscription.)

  • Changing billing and payment information: Users can change their billing and payment information in 0patch Central now.

  • Registering agents directly to a group: Enterprise users will like this one; before, all deployed agents appeared in the root All Computers group and had to be manually moved to appropriate groups. Now, each group has its own key which can be used for auto-registration via MSI command-line arguments, allowing admins to bulk-deploy 0patch agent to all computers in some existing group in their central management system, and registered these agents directly to an appropriate group in 0patch Central.

  • Computer comments: Each computer now has a comment field that can be used to provide additional details.

  • License comments: Each license now has a comment field that can be used to provide additional details, a feature most requested from managed service providers and resellers.

  • No more duplicate agents: Before, a re-registration of 0patch Agent on the same computer resulted in a duplicate computer in the Computers list. This is now resolved.

 

We hope you'll like the new 0patch Central and 0patch user experience. If you run into any issues, please report them to support@0patch.com.

Your 0patch Team

 

 

Tuesday, October 19, 2021

Significant 0patch Server Update on October 20, 2021

Dear 0patch users,

We've listened to you, and now we're delivering some of the features and changes you told us would make your use of 0patch easier. Among them are subscription, billing and payment method management, monthly subscriptions, registering agents directly into groups, faster syncing, no more computer duplicates upon agent re-registration and much more. A detailed list will be published after the server has been updated.

The update will take place on Wednesday, October 20, starting at 8 AM CET and will last for up to 4 hours.

During this time period, the following will apply:

  • 0patch Agents will not be able to sync, but will keep applying all patches that have previously been downloaded. The 0patch icon will turn yellow.
  • 0patch Central will not be available. Instead, a maintenance page will be shown at https://central.0patch.com, with embedded 0patch Twitter feed with latest announcements.
  • Registration of new 0patch accounts will not be possible.
  • Any purchases made via https://0patch.com web site will result in created subscriptions but notification emails (such as account activation email) will be delayed until the server is back up.


Thank you for understanding,

your 0patch Team

[Update: server update was successful, all systems are running normally.]


Monday, September 27, 2021

Micropatches for the "File Extension" URL Scheme (CVE-2021-40444)

 


 

by Mitja Kolsek, the 0patch Team

September 2021 Windows Updates brought a fix for CVE-2021-40444, a critical vulnerability in Windows that allowed a malicious Office document to download a remote executable file and execute it locally upon opening such document. This vulnerability was found under exploitation in the wild.

 

The Vulnerability

Unfortunately, CVE-2021-40444 does not cover just one flaw but two; this can lead to some confusion:

  1. Path traversal in CAB file extraction: The exploit was utilizing this flaw to place a malicious executable file in a known location instead of a randomly-named subfolder, where it would originally be extracted.

  2. "File extension" URL scheme: For some reason, Windows ShellExecute function, a very complex function capable of launching local applications in various ways including via URLs, supported an undocumented URL scheme mapped to registered file extensions on the computer. The exploit was utilizing this "feature" to launch the previously downloaded executable file with the Control Panel application and have it executed via URL ".cpl:../../../../../Temp/championship.cpl". In this case, ".cpl" was considered a URL scheme, and since .cpl extension is associated with control.exe, this app would get launched and given the provided path as an argument.

The second flaw is the more critical one, as there may exist various other ways to get a malicious file on user's computer (e.g., via the Downloads folder) and still exploit this second flaw to execute such file.

 

Microsoft's Patch

What Microsoft's patch did was add a check before calling ShellExecute on the provided URL to block URL schemes beginning with a non-alphanumeric character - blocking schemes beginning with a dot such as ".cpl" -, and further limiting the allowed set of characters for the remaining string.

Note that ShellExecute function itself was not patched, and you can still launch a DLL via the Control Panel app by clicking the Windows Start button and typing in a ".cpl:/..." URL. Effectively, therefore, support for the "File extension" URL scheme was not eliminated across entire Windows, just made inaccessible from applications utilizing Internet Explorer components for opening URLs. Hopefully remotely delivered content can't find some other way towards ShellExecute that bypasses this new security check.


Our Micropatch

Microsoft's update fixed both flaws, but we decided to only patch the "File extension" URL scheme flaw until someone demonstrates the first flaw to be exploitable by itself.

The "File extension" URL scheme flaw was actually present in two places, in mshtml.dll (reachable from Office documents) and in ieframe.dll (reachable from Internet Explorer), so we had to patch both these executables.

Since an official vendor fix is available, it was our goal to provide patches for affected Windows versions that we have "security-adopted", as they're not receiving official vendor patches anymore. Among these, our tests have shown that only Windows 10 v1803 and v1809 were affected; the File Extension URL scheme "feature" was apparently added in Windows 8.1.

We expect many Windows 10 v1903 machines out there may also be affected, so we decided to port the micropatch to this version as well.

Our CVE-2021-40444 micropatches are therefore available for: 

  1. Windows 10 v1803 32bit or 64bit (updated with May 2021 Updates - latest before end of support)
  2. Windows 10 v1809 32bit or 64bit (updated with May 2021 Updates - latest before end of support) 
  3. Windows 10 v1903 32bit or 64bit (updated with December 2020 Updates - latest before end of support) 


Below is a video of our patch in action. Notice that with 0patch disabled, Calculator is launched both upon opening the Word document and upon previewing the RTF document in Windows Explorer Preview. In both cases, Process Monitor shows that control.exe gets launched, which loads the "malicious" executable, in our case spawning Calculator. With 0patch enabled, control.exe does not get launched, and therefore neither does Calculator.




In line with our guidelines, these patches require a PRO license. To obtain them and have them applied on your computer(s) along with other micropatches included with a PRO license, create an account in 0patch Central, install 0patch Agent and register it to your account, then purchase 0patch PRO.
For a free trial, contact sales@0patch.com.
 
Note that no computer restart is needed for installing the agent or applying/un-applying any 0patch micropatches.

We'd like to thank Will Dormann for an in-depth public analysis of this vulnerability, which helped us create a micropatch and protect our users.

To learn more about 0patch, please visit our Help Center.

Monday, August 23, 2021

Micropatching MSHTML Remote Code Execution Issue (CVE-2021-33742)

 

 

by Mitja Kolsek, the 0patch Team

June 2021 Windows Updates brought a fix for CVE-2021-33742, a remote code execution in the MSHTML component, exploitable via Microsoft browsers and potentially other applications using this component, e.g. via a malicious Microsoft Word document. Discovery of this issue was attributed to Clément Lecigne of Google’s Threat Analysis Group, while Google's security researcher Maddie Stone wrote a detailed analysis. A short proof-of-concept (see Maddie's article) that causes access violation in the browser was written by Ivan Fratric of Google Project Zero.

Our tests showed that out of the Windows versions that we have "security adopted", we were only able to reproduce the vulnerability on Windows 10 v1803 and v1809, so these were the ones we wanted to create a micropatch for.

After reproducing the vulnerability, we looked at Microsoft's patch to see if we could do something similar for the two affected Windows 10 versions that haven't received the official vendor fix.

 


 

As seen on the above image, Microsoft has just added a check to see if the user-influenced value (size of TextData element) that caused memory corruption was greater than 0x1FFFFFFF. If so, it triggers an assertion and effectively crashes the process without trying to resolve the situation. This is a bit unusual as it implies that either (a) Microsoft found it extremely difficult to fix this issue at some root level, issue a JavaScript exception and keep the process running, or (b) they wanted to get this over with quickly because Internet Explorer is hardly supported anymore and MSHTML, while still being used by other applications such as Microsoft Word, is not a critical component for their most important customers.

Be it as it may, our micropatch does the same as looking for a better fix could take us down a rabbit hole for a long time. However, it also records an "Exploit Blocked" event to the local 0patch log so an attack will leave a trace.

Source code of our micropatch:



MODULE_PATH "..\Affected_Modules\mshtml.dll_11.0.17134.2208_32bit_Win10v1803-u202105\mshtml.dll"
PATCH_ID 667
PATCH_FORMAT_VER 2
VULN_ID 7139
PLATFORM win32
patchlet_start
    PATCHLET_ID 1
    PATCHLET_TYPE 2
    PATCHLET_OFFSET 0x4498d0
    N_ORIGINALBYTES 5
    JUMPOVERBYTES 0
    PIT mshtml!0x75e4f0
    ;0x75e4f0 -> Release_Assert
    
    code_start
        mov eax, ebx            ;Get the size of the string       
        cmp eax, 2000000h       ;Check if the string is shorter than 0x2000000
        jl NOEXPLOIT            ;If it's shorter, continue
        call PIT_ExploitBlocked ;If not shorter, show the popup
        setl cl                 ;flag that controls the behavior of Release_Assert function.
                                ;If it's 0, the function does nothing.
        call PIT_0x75e4f0       ;Call Release_Assert
        NOEXPLOIT:
    code_end
    
patchlet_end

   

 

And the video of our patch in action. Note that in contrast to a typical micropatch that prevents the process from crashing, this micropatch - doing exactly the same as Microsoft's fix - lets the process crash in a controlled, unexploitable way in case an overly long string is encountered.



This micropatch was written for: 

  1. Windows 10 v1809 (updated with May 2021 Updates - latest before end of support) 
  2. Windows 10 v1803 (updated with May 2021 Updates - latest before end of support)

 

To obtain the micropatch and have it applied on your computer(s) along with other micropatches included with a PRO license, create an account in 0patch Central, install 0patch Agent and register it to your account. Note that no computer restart is needed for installing the agent or applying/un-applying any 0patch micropatch. For a 0patch trial, contact sales@0patch.com

We'd like to thank Clément Lecigne, Maddie Stone and Ivan Fratric of Google for finding this issue and sharing details, which allowed us to create a micropatch and protect our users.

To learn more about 0patch, please visit our Help Center.


 

 

Friday, August 6, 2021

Free Micropatches for "PetitPotam" (CVE-2021-36942)


 

by Mitja Kolsek, the 0patch Team


Update 8/11/2021-A: August 2021 Windows Updates brought a fix for PetitPotam, which, in contrast to our patch that fixes an impersonation issue and keeps EfsRpcOpenFileRaw request functional, disables the EfsRpcOpenFileRaw request. CVE-2021-36942 was assigned to this vulnerability. More details below in the Microsoft's Patch section.

Update 8/11/2021-B: Neither Microsoft's August fix nor our micropatch seem to have covered all PetitPotam affected code. Both fixed the anonymous attack vector but we're investigating additional authenticated paths now and looking for the best way to patch that too. The most effective PetitPotam mitigation currently remains this RPC filter on all Domain Controllers, although it may be an overly broad measure and could break something, so proceed with caution.  

Update 8/19/2021: After further analysis of additional PetitPotam attack vectors, we created additional micropatches that block all these vectors. Today's PetitPotam patches are written for executables from August 2021 Windows Updates, which means you have to have these updates installed (i.e., fully updated Windows as of this writing) in order to have them applied. 

Update 9/15/2021: September 2021 Windows Updates did not bring any changes regarding the new PetitPotam attack vectors, so our micropatches remain free.

Update 12/21/2021: Microsoft provided an official fix for this issue on December 14, which addresses the remaining attack vectors. Our associated micropatches thus ceased being free and now require a PRO license.

Update 6/27/2022: While Microsoft only fixed the anonymous attack vector, we decided to also address the authenticated attack vector. We therefore ported our patches for this issue to current versions of supported Windows platforms. Given that Microsoft does not plan to patch authenticated credentials relaying issues, these patches are now available only to PRO and Enterprise accounts.

Update 6/3/2024: It came to our attention that PetitPotam can also be exploited against Windows Workstations, not just Servers. We therefore issued patches for all security-adopted as well as still-supported Windows versions, which we'll keep porting to relevant DLLs as they get updated.


Wow, we're busy these days. Just yesterday we issued micropatches for the "Malicious Printer Driver" 0day, and today we're fixing a critical remote code execution issue that allows an anonymous attacker to take over a Windows Domain Controller: the infamous "PetitPotam" bug.

PetitPotam was discovered by security researcher topotam, who published their proof-of-concept on Github on July 20, 2021. There is no official vendor patch for it at the time of this writing; in fact, Microsoft's support article implies they do not consider this a vulnerability but rather a mis-configuration, and provides some generic mitigations that do not address the root issue.

As usually, CERT/CC vulnerability note by Will Dormann nicely explains the vulnerability and an exploit chain leading to a complete domain takeover. The main problem is that any user - even anonymous - can force a domain controller to send NTLM credentials of its computer account to attacker's server, where these can be received and then relayed to another service in the domain to make a malicious privileged request.

 

Analysis

We took a look at what goes on in the code when an EfsRpcOpenFileRaw request is received by the server. It is function  EfsRpcOpenFileRaw_Downlevel in efslsaext.dll that processes this request. This function has most of its code enclosed in an impersonation block between a call to RpcImpersonateClient and a call to RpcRevertToSelf. Code inside this block is being executed under the identity of the requesting entity (in our case, attacker), while code outside executes as Local System, i.e., the computer account.

Unfortunately, function EfsRpcOpenFileRaw_Downlevel, outside the impersonation block, makes a call to EfsGetLocalFileName, which tries to open the attacker-supplied UNC path. By doing so, it sends local computer's NTLM credentials inside the SMB request to the remote network share. If the attacker is waiting on the other end, they get these credentials.

Let's take a look at relevant parts of function EfsRpcOpenFileRaw_Downlevel:


Beginning of function EfsRpcOpenFileRaw_Downlevel, with the call to EfsGetLocalFilename being called without impersonation

Continuation of function EfsRpcOpenFileRaw_Downlevel

Note that only this call to EfsGetLocalFileName is non-impersonated, while core EFSRPC functionality executes under requester's identity. This means that anonymous or unprivileged user cannot remotely execute EFSRPC functions such as reading or creating arbitrary network files.

 

Micropatch

Our micropatch extends the impersonation block such that it now encloses the previously un-impersonated call to EfsGetLocalFileName; as a result, the SMB request which this function triggers contains attacker's NTLM credentials instead of computer account's. Therefore, in case of an anonymous request the attacker gets credentials of the ANONYMOUS LOGON user (which are of no use), and if they use credentials of a Windows domain user, the acquired NTLM credentials will be of that same user (which they already have).

The patch contains two patchlets, one starting impersonation by calling RpcImpersonateClient,  and another stopping impersonation by calling RpcRevertToSelf.



MODULE_PATH "..\Affected_Modules\efslsaext.dll_10.0.17763.1075_64bit_WinSrv2019-u202107\efslsaext.dll"
PATCH_ID 663
PATCH_FORMAT_VER 2
VULN_ID 7174
PLATFORM win64

patchlet_start
    PATCHLET_ID 1
    PATCHLET_TYPE 2
    PATCHLET_OFFSET 0x280c
    N_ORIGINALBYTES 5
    JUMPOVERBYTES 0
    PIT rpcrt4!0x53370,efslsaext!0x288c
    ;0x53370 -> RpcImpersonateClient
    ;0x288c -> Error block
    
    code_start    ;Injected at the top of the block containing
                   EfsRpcGetLocalFileName, in the EfsRpcOpenFileRaw_Downlevel
                   function
        mov rcx, 0        ;Set rcx for RpcImpersonateClient to 0, so it
                           impersonates the current client
        call PIT_0x53370  ;Call RpcImpersonateClient
        mov rbx, rax      ;Move the result to rbx, so it can be used for error
                           reporting in case of failure   
        cmp rax, 0        ;Check if impersonation failed
        jne PIT_0x288c    ;If failed, jump to error block
    code_end
    
patchlet_end

patchlet_start
    PATCHLET_ID 2
    PATCHLET_TYPE 2
    PATCHLET_OFFSET 0x288c
    N_ORIGINALBYTES 5
    JUMPOVERBYTES 0
    PIT rpcrt4!0x563b0
    ;0x563b0 -> RpcReverToSelf
    
    code_start  ;Injected at the top of the block right after the
                 RpcRevertToSelf call, in the EfsRpcOpenFileRaw_Downlevel function
        call PIT_0x563b0    ;Call RpcRevertToSelf to stop impersonating
    code_end
    
patchlet_end

   

 

Let's look at the difference between running the PetitPotam tool against a fully updated Windows Server without and with 0patch.


Without 0patch

Let's see which user executes the call to EfsGetLocalFileName:


 

As expected, it's Local System. And the PetitPotam tool, chained with Active Directory Certificate Server produces domain controller's certificate:

 


With 0patch

Let's see which user executes the call to EfsGetLocalFileName this time:

 


Good, it's the Anonymous Logon user, which is useless to the attacker. Consequently, the PetitPotam attack doesn't work anymore:

 


Patch Availability

This micropatch was written for:

 

  1. Windows Server 2019 (updated with July 2021 Updates)
  2. Windows Server 2016 (updated with July 2021 Updates)
  3. Windows Server 2012 R2 (updated with July 2021 Updates)
  4. Windows Server 2008 R2 (updated with January 2020 Updates, no Extended Security Updates) 

 

Our tests indicate that Windows Server 2012 (non R2), Windows Server 2008 (non R2) and Windows Server 2003 are not affected by this issue.

Micropatches for this vulnerability are, as always, automatically downloaded and applied to all affected computers (unless your policy prevents that), and will be free until Microsoft has issued an official fix. If you want to use them, create a free account at 0patch Central, then install and register 0patch Agent from 0patch.com. Everything else will happen automatically. No computer reboots will be needed.

Compatibility note: Some Windows 10 and Server systems exhibit occasional timeouts in the Software Protection Platform Service (sppsvc.exe) on a system running 0patch Agent. This looks like a bug in Windows Code Integrity mitigation that prevents a 0patch component to be injected in the service (which is okay) but sometimes also does a lot of seemingly meaningless processing that causes process startup to time out. As a result, various licensing-related errors can occur. The issue, should it occur, can be resolved by excluding sppsvc.exe from 0patch injection as described in this article.

Update 8/19/2021: Microsoft's August 2021 updates brought a functionally similar fix as our micropatch, but since other attack vectors were subsequently discovered, we have issued additional micropatches that apply on top of August 2021 Windows executables. In order to use them, you have to have August 2021 Windows Updates applied. In addition, we have found Windows Server 2012 to be affected to these additional vectors and have also covered this Windows version with our new micropatches.


[Update 8/11/2021: added section Microsoft's Patch]

Microsoft's Patch

August 2021 Windows Updates brought Microsoft's official fix for this issue. The associated documentation states: "The EFS API OpenEncryptedFileRaw(A/W), often used in backup software, continues to work in all versions of Windows (local and remote), except when backing up to or from a system running Windows Server 2008 SP2. OpenEncryptedFileRaw will no longer work on Windows Server 2008 SP2. Note: If you are unable to use backup software on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 and later, after installing the updates that address this CVE, contact the manufacturer of your backup software for updates and support."

 Let's take a look at this fix.

 


Microsoft's fix is in the same function as our micropatch ( EfsRpcOpenFileRaw_Downlevel in efslsaext.dll), but it sabotages the function so it doesn't work anymore. We actually also sometimes sabotage an entire function if it seems that could affect such a small amount of users that the benefits would outweigh the risk. In fact, we were initially inclined to do it here too as we were unable to find any backup product or mechanism that would be using this function - but then decided to rather fix the obvious bug we had noticed, and keep the function "alive".

Note that Microsoft's fix also includes a hidden undocumented feature: instead of outright sabotaging OpenEncryptedFileRaw, the fix checks an undocumented registry value AllowOpenRawDL (DWORD) under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\EFS; if this value exists and is equal to 1, OpenEncryptedFileRaw works as before. Therefore, if Microsoft's fix broke your backup, you can disable it using this value, but doing so will make you vulnerable to the PetitPotam attack.

We find this Microsoft's fix to be appropriate and therefore do not plan to port our PetitPotam micropatch to the August 2021 version of efslsaext.dll unless 0patch users come complaining the fix broke their backup. We also invite any Windows users whose backup got broken by August 2021 Windows Update to contact us at sales@0patch.com.

Update 8/11/2021: Neither Microsoft's August fix nor our micropatch seem to have covered all PetitPotam affected code. Both fixed the anonymous attack vector but we're investigating additional authenticated paths now and looking for the best way to patch that too. 

Update 8/19/2021: Our new micropatches released today address these additional attack vectors.

 

Credits

We'd like to thank topotam for sharing details about this vulnerability, and Will Dormann, Benjamin Delpy and Kevin Beaumont for sharing lots of useful insights and context that helped us understand this vulnerability and create this micropatch to protect users.

Please revisit this blog post for updates or follow 0patch on Twitter.