full-disclosure - Insecure call to CreateProcess()/CreateProcessAsUser()

lists.openwall.net		lists / announce owl-users owl-dev john-users john-dev passwdqc-users yescrypt popa3d-users / oss-security kernel-hardening musl sabotage tlsify passwords / crypt-dev xvendor / Bugtraq Full-Disclosure linux-kernel linux-netdev linux-ext4 linux-hardening linux-cve-announce PHC
Open Source and information security mailing list archives

Hash Suite: Windows password security audit tool. GUI, reports in PDF.

[<prev] [next>] [thread-next>] [day] [month] [year] [list]

Date: Sun May 21 16:02:19 2006
From: cmorris at cs.odu.edu (Charles Morris)
Subject: Insecure call to
	CreateProcess()/CreateProcessAsUser()

Microsoft Explorer (iexplore.exe) calls CreateProcess() with
lpApplicationName = NULL. Instead, the lpCommandLine variable is used.
Unfortunateally, if the lpCommandLine variable is not quoted properly, the
function will attempt to load&execute multiple other applications in
the following fashion:

lpCommandLine = C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe
Will attempt to execute:
C:\Program.exe
C:\Program Files\Google\Google.exe
C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe

If Microsoft Hyperterminal is set up to be your default telnet client,
this behavior is known to be triggered from the web with a telnet:// style link.

Microsoft was notified, they told me it was a "non issue", that they
coulden't reproduce it, and basically "dont worry about it". or
something. Unfortunateally although explorer.exe warns a user when the
file "C:\Program.exe" exists, it does not check any other paths,
therefore it is not nearly a sufficient workaround.

-- 
Charles Morris
        cmorris@...odu.edu

Network Administrator
CS Systems Group                Old Dominion University
http://15037760514/~cmorris