Heap-based AMSI bypass for MS Excel VBA and others

This blog post describes how to bypass Microsoft's AMSI (Antimalware Scan Interface) in Excel using VBA (Visual Basic for Applications). In contrast to other bypasses this approach does not use hardcoded offsets or opcodes but identifies crucial data on the heap and modifies it. The idea of an heap-based bypass has been mentioned by other researchers before but at the time of writing this article no public PoC was available. This blog post will provide the reader with some insights into the AMSI implementation and a generic way to bypass it.

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.