Micropatches Released for Windows MSHTML Platform Remote Code Execution Vulnerability (CVE-2023-35628)

 

December 2023 Windows Updates brought a patch for CVE-2023-35628, a memory corruption vulnerability that could potentially lead to remote code execution when an application on user's computer tried to access a URL provided by an attacker.

Security researcher  Ben Barnea of Akamai, who found this vulnerability and reported it to Microsoft, wrote a detailed article and published a simple and effective POC. These allowed us to reproduce the issue and create a micropatch for affected legacy Windows systems, which are no longer receiving security updates from Microsoft. 

The Vulnerability

The vulnerability resides inside the CrackUrlFile function in iertutil.dll. In July 2023, Microsoft added some code to this function that introduced the vulnerability, whereby a heap free operation is made on an invalid pointer when the provided URL is properly formatted as described in Ben's article.

CrackUrlFile is a fairly generic function and can be used by various processes and applications. Ben demonstrated the vulnerability with a simple .lnk file, which immediately crashes Windows Explorer when the directory with such file is displayed to the user. His article also mentions a possibility of triggering the vulnerability through an email message shown in Outlook, and Microsoft's advisory adds an Instant Messenger message as a possible attack vector.

Our Micropatch

We patched this issue in the same way Microsoft did, by replacing the flawed code that changed the pointer to the URL with corrected code that doesn't.

Let's see our patch in action. The video below first shows an empty Windows Event Log and a malicious .lnk file in the Downloads folder pointing to file://./UNC/C:/Akamai.com/file.wav. (Note that displaying this .lnk file does not crash Windows Explorer because 0patch is enabled and the vulnerability already patched by it.)

Then, 0patch is disabled, which un-applies all 0patch micropatches from running processes, including the micropatch for CVE-2023-35628 from explorer.exe process. Opening the Downloads folder leads to immediate crashing of explorer.exe without any other user interaction as the process tries to determine an icon for the .lnk file, leading to the "malicious" URL being processed by vulnerable CrackUrlFile function.

Finally, 0patch is re-enabled, and the malicious .lnk file is unable to crash Windows Explorer because the vulnerability was removed from the process.

Micropatch Availability

Micropatches were written for the following security-adopted versions of Windows with all available Windows Updates installed:

1. Windows 11 v21H2 - fully updated
2. Windows Server 2012 R2 - fully updated with no ESU
   

 

Our patches only cover Windows 11 21H2 and Windows Server 2012 R2, as other systems either received official patches in December 2023 or don't even have the vulnerability that was only introduced in July of 2023. Even though Microsoft also listed Windows Server 2012 as affected, we couldn't reproduce the issue on this system, and could find no traces of vulnerable code there either.

 

Micropatches have already been distributed to, and applied on, all online 0patch Agents in PRO or Enterprise accounts (unless Enterprise group settings prevent that). 

Vulnerabilities like these get discovered on a regular basis, and attackers know about them all. If you're using Windows that aren't receiving official security updates anymore, 0patch will make sure these vulnerabilities won't be exploited on your computers - and you won't even have to know or care about these things.

If you're new to 0patch, create a free account in 0patch Central, then install and register 0patch Agent from 0patch.com, and email sales@0patch.com for a trial. Everything else will happen automatically. No computer reboot will be needed.

We would like to thank  Ben Barnea of Akamai for sharing their analysis and POC, which made it possible for us to create a micropatch for this issue.

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