Zero-day vulnerability in Windows

Privilege escalation
CVE-2008-1436

The vulnerability was used in Operation Iron Tiger, a cyber espionage campaign carried out by Chinese hackers on United States Defense Contractors.

Vulnerability details

Advisory: SB2008041701 - Privilege escalation in Microsoft Windows

Vulnerable component: Windows

CVE-ID: CVE-2008-1436

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

CWE-ID: CWE-264 - Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls

Description:

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

The weakness exists due to improper security restrictions on security tokens in the Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC) service. By sending a specially crafted request to the MSDTC service, an attacker can access privileged security tokens and execute code with privileges of SYSTEM account.

Successful exploitation of the vulnerability results in privilege escalation allowing to execute arbitrary code and take complete control of an affected system.

Note: this vulnerability was being actively exploited.

Known APT campaigns:

Operation Iron Tiger

The operation was performed by Chinese group, called Emissary Panda or Threat Group-3390 (TG-3390).

Hackers targeted US defense contractors and companies.

Public Exploits:

- Microsoft Windows - SeImpersonatePrivilege - Privilege Escalation [Exploit-DB]

External links:

https://technet.microsoft.com/library/security/951306
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/archive/1/497168/100/0/threaded
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/archive/...
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms09-012.aspx
http://nomoreroot.blogspot.com/2008/10/windows-2003-poc-exploit-for-token.html
https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/msrc/2008/04/17/msrc-blog-microsoft-security-advisory-951306/
https://www.erai.com/CustomUploads/ca/wp/2015_12_wp_operation_iron_tiger.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.