Security News > 2020 > August > Actively Exploited Windows Spoofing Flaw Patched Two Years After Disclosure

The actively exploited Windows spoofing vulnerability patched last week by Microsoft has been known for more than two years, researchers pointed out.

Microsoft's August 2020 Patch Tuesday updates addressed 120 vulnerabilities, including an Internet Explorer zero-day that has been chained with a Windows flaw in attacks linked to the threat actor named DarkHotel, and a Windows spoofing issue tracked as CVE-2020-1464.

Researchers analyzed CVE-2020-1464 after Microsoft released its patch and noticed that it's likely a vulnerability that has been known for years and which Microsoft has been refusing to fix.

"Microsoft Windows keeps the Authenticode signature valid after appending any content to the end of Windows Installer files signed by any software developer. This behaviour can be exploited by attackers to bypass some security solutions that rely on Microsoft Windows code signing to decide if files are trusted. The scenario is especially dangerous when the appended code is a malicious JAR because the resulting file has a valid signature according to Microsoft Windows and the malware can be directly executed by Java," Bernardo Quintero, founder of VirusTotal, explained in the January 2019 blog post.

"It was very clear to everyone involved, Microsoft included, that GlueBall is indeed a valid vulnerability exploited in the wild. Therefore, it is not clear why it was only patched now and not two years ago."

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