Researchers Disarm Microsoft's EMET 33
wiredmikey (1824622) writes "Security researchers have found a way to disable the protection systems provided by the latest version of Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET), a software tool designed to prevent vulnerabilities from being exploited by using various mitigation technologies. Others have managed to bypass EMET in the past, but researchers from Offensive Security have focused on disarming EMET, rather than on bypassing mitigations, as this method gives an attacker the ability use generic shellcodes such as the ones generated by Metasploit. The researchers managed to disarm EMET and get a shell after finding a global variable in the .data section of the EMET.dll file. Initially, they only managed to get a shell by executing the exploit with a debugger attached, due to EMET's EAF checks. However, they've succeeded in getting a shell outside the debugger after disarming EAF with a method described by security researcher Piotr Bania in January 2012. The researchers tested their findings on Windows 7, Internet Explorer 8 and EMET 4.1 update 1."
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There is also the devil's advocate here: Every black hat, criminal organization, and national intel department is focusing on Microsoft's stuff with a passion, because a 0-day that is big enough could mean billions of revenue from extortion, blackmail, or just malicious mischief.
Before Microsoft was the leader, people said the same exact stuff about Sun. They whined that Solaris had too many holes, talked about how slow the fixes came out, and so on.
Microsoft has a lot of bad guys hunting them down every
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At the very least I would expect "felonious tomfoolery"!
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I'm no lawyer but I feel certain that if you manage to get billions out of an exploit the words "malicious mischief" will not appear in the indictment... At the very least I would expect "felonious tomfoolery"!
My God man! There are women and children present! Break out the smelling salts.
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I'm no lawyer but I feel certain that if you manage to get billions out of an exploit the words "malicious mischief" will not appear in the indictment... At the very least I would expect "felonious tomfoolery"!
My God man! There are women and children present! Break out the smelling salts.
That's why I didn't go with "assiduous asshatterie".
0-day? (Score:1)
Re: Let's face it ... (Score:1)
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I want more details here. I generally have a disdain for Microsoft but here it seems they built a custom target to exploit.
If they did this against say, IE or some other app in the wild, sure lets ask if we should pack it up. Until then...
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Trying to get Flash to fall under all of EMET's protections is like trying to hit three moving targets. As soon as Flash gets updated, the executables it uses run under different file names and any specific mitigations are then lost. Thankfully, most applications that are easy meat for EMET's good work are a one-off config.
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Your missing the point. If you have administrator rights, why even bother disabling EMET. Just uninstall it. Here is a quick exploit code for that:
Get-WmiObject Win32_Product | Where-Object{$_.Name -match "EMET"} | ForEach-Object{$_.Uninstall()}
If the attacker has admin rights then game over. Any other exploit after that is just smoke and mirrors.
Please do not disarm Microsofts EMET! (Score:2)
Researchers Disarm Microsoft's EMET : tha did scare me a lot!
OK, I'll bite (Score:2)
>managed to disarm EMET and get a shell after finding a global variable in the .data section
What is wrong with storing variables in the data section? Isn't that where you're supposed to keep data?
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also some one running 4.1 of emet... probably isn't running ie8 wonder why the used ie8.
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Perhaps because IE8 is the browser that comes with Windows 7?
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umm by that logic they wouldn't need to worry about bypassing emet... since it doesn't come with win7
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They were not testing IE8. They were testing EMET. They used IE8 as the entry point because it has a known vulnerability that EMET is supposed to mitigate.
They could probably use any software with an exploit that enables remote code execution.
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Yeah, I wondered about that, too.
Seriously? IE8?
I had to dump IE8, 9 and 10 at work because some sites objected.
I had banks and e-file systems people tell me to just get Firefox, please.
Did they cross out the E? (Score:4, Funny)
Torah joke.
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Torah joke.
They got lazy and didn't erase it completely, so the system just ran amok.
but then IT pros go union and get licenses so they (Score:2)
but then IT pros go union and get licenses so they can't be pushed around by MBA's and PHB's to do stuff in an cheap and non secure ways..
Other side of this airtight hatchway... (Score:5, Informative)
If you are able to arbitrarily modify system .DLLs, aren't you already in the system?
Sounds an awful lot like today's Old New Thing post: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/oldnew... [msdn.com]
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OK, replying to myself, after doing more reading.
I guess the software under attack is designed to stop limited exploits from becoming big ones, and it's referring to the image in the .DLL in it's loaded into memory state, not on disk.
I'd describe it as like knowing how to use a coathanger to unlock a car door.
Like humanitarian sciences (Score:1)