Zero-day vulnerability in Windows

Privilege escalation
CVE-2014-4113

The vulnerability was apparently found and reported to Microsoft by both ╨бrowdStrike and FireEye.
The vulnerability has been actively exploited in the wild for at least five month by highly advanced adversary group named HURRICANE PANDA.

Known malware:

Nuclear Exploit Kit.

Vulnerability details

Advisory: SB2014101401 - Privilege escalation in Microsoft Windows

Vulnerable component: Windows

CVE-ID: CVE-2014-4113

CVSSv3 score: CVSS:3.1/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:C/C:H/I:H/A:H/E:H/RL:O/RC:C

CWE-ID: CWE-119 - Memory corruption

Description:

The vulnerability allows a local attacker to obtain elevated privileges on the target system.

The weakness exists due to improper handling of objects in memory by kernel-mode driver (win32k.sys). A local attacker can run a specially crafted application to gain elevated privileges and take complete control of the system.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability results in arbitrary code execution on the vulnerable system.

Note: the vulnerability was being actively exploited.

Known APT campaigns:

Hurricane Panda

Hurricane Panda is an attack targeting major infrastructure companies.

Attack was detected in 2013 and is believed to be of Chinese origin.

Public Exploits:

- Microsoft Windows - TrackPopupMenu Win32k Null Pointer Dereference (MS14-058) (Metasploit) [Exploit-DB]

- Microsoft Windows Kernel - 'win32k.sys' Privilege Escalation (MS14-058) [Exploit-DB]

- Microsoft Windows 8.0/8.1 (x64) - 'TrackPopupMenu' Privilege Escalation (MS14-058) [Exploit-DB]

- Microsoft Windows 8.1/ Server 2012 - 'Win32k.sys' Local Privilege Escalation (MS14-058) [Exploit-DB]

- Microsoft Windows - Net-NTLMv2 Reflection DCOM/RPC (Metasploit) [Exploit-DB]

External links:

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms14-058
https://dl.packetstormsecurity.net/papers/attack/CVE-2014-4113.pdf
https://www.crowdstrike.com/blog/crowdstrike-discovers-use-64-bit-zero-day-privilege-escalation-expl...
https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2014/10/two-targeted-attacks-two-new-zero-days.html
http://blog.trendmicro.com/trendlabs-security-intelligence/an-analysis-of-a-windows-kernel-mode-vuln...
http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/29270/security/microsoft-fixes-3-zero-day.html
http://www.securityweek.com/multiple-patch-tuesday-vulnerabilities-under-attack
https://labs.mwrinfosecurity.com/assets/BlogFiles/mwri-lab-exploiting-cve-2014-4113.pdf

About zero-day vulnerabilities

Zero-day vulnerability is an undisclosed vulnerability in software that hackers can exploit to compromise computer programs, gain unauthorized access to sensitive data, penetrate networks, etc. We consider vulnerability a zero-day when there is no solution provided from software vendor and the vulnerability is being actively exploited by malicious actors.

Zero-day candidate is a potential zero-day vulnerability in software which might have been used in targeted attacks, however there is no evidence to support this suggestion.