A security researcher has published today
demo exploit code on GitHub for a Windows 10 zero-day vulnerability.
The zero-day is what security researchers call a local privilege escalation (LPE).
LPE vulnerabilities can't be used to break into systems, but hackers can use them at later stages in their attacks to elevate their access on compromised hosts from low-privileged to admin-level accounts.
According to a description of the zero-day posted on GitHub, this vulnerability resides in the Windows Task Scheduler process.
Attackers can run a malformed .job file that exploits a flaw in the way the Task Scheduler process changes
DACL (discretionary access control list) permissions for an individual file.
When exploited, the vulnerability can elevate a hacker's low-privileged account to admin access, which, in turn, grants the intruder access over the entire system.
The zero-day has only been tested and confirmed to work on Windows 10 32-bit systems.
However, ZDNet was told today that, in theory, the zero-day should also work, with some fine-tuning, on all Windows versions -- going back to XP and Server 2003 -- although this might require some testing and further confirmation over the coming days.
A demo of the proof-of-concept exploit code is embedded below.
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