Telerik Revisited

In 2017, several vulnerabilities were discovered in Telerik UI, a popular UI component library for .NET web applications. Although details and working exploits are public, it often proves to be a good idea to take a closer look at it. Because sometimes it allows you to explore new avenues of exploitation.

LethalHTA - A new lateral movement technique using DCOM and HTA

The following blog post introduces a new lateral movement technique that combines the power of DCOM and HTA. The research on this technique is partly an outcome of our recent research efforts on COM Marshalling: Marshalling to SYSTEM - An analysis of CVE-2018-0824.

Marshalling to SYSTEM - An analysis of CVE-2018-0824

In May 2018 Microsoft patched an interesting vulnerability (CVE-2018-0824) which was reported by Nicolas Joly of Microsoft's MSRC:

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in "Microsoft COM for Windows" when it fails to properly handle serialized objects. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could use a specially crafted file or script to perform actions. In an email attack scenario, an attacker could exploit the vulnerability by sending the specially crafted file to the user and convincing the user to open the file. In a web-based attack scenario, an attacker could host a website (or leverage a compromised website that accepts or hosts user-provided content) that contains a specially crafted file that is designed to exploit the vulnerability. However, an attacker would have no way to force the user to visit the website. Instead, an attacker would have to convince the user to click a link, typically by way of an enticement in an email or Instant Messenger message, and then convince the user to open the specially crafted file. The security update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how "Microsoft COM for Windows" handles serialized objects.

The keywords "COM" and "serialized" pretty much jumped into my face when the advisory came out. Since I had already spent several months of research time on Microsoft COM last year I decided to look into it. Although the vulnerability can result in remote code execution, I'm only interested in the privilege escalation aspects.

Poor RichFaces

RichFaces is one of the most popular component libraries for JavaServer Faces (JSF). In the past, two vulnerabilities (CVE-2013-2165 and CVE-2015-0279) have been found that allow RCE in versions 3.x ≤ 3.3.3 and 4.x ≤ 4.5.3. Code White discovered two new vulnerabilities which bypass the implemented mitigations. Thereby, all RichFaces versions including the latest 3.3.4 and 4.5.17 are vulnerable to RCE.

Exploiting Adobe ColdFusion before CVE-2017-3066

In a recent penetration test my teammate Thomas came across several servers running Adobe ColdFusion 11 and 12. Some of them were vulnerable to CVE-2017-3066 but no outgoing TCP connections were possible to exploit the vulnerability. He asked me whether I had an idea how he could still get a SYSTEM shell and the outcome of the short research effort is documented here.