Vulnerabilities > CVE-2018-8233 - Improper Resource Shutdown or Release vulnerability in Microsoft Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016
Attack vector
LOCAL Attack complexity
LOW Privileges required
NONE Confidentiality impact
COMPLETE Integrity impact
COMPLETE Availability impact
COMPLETE Summary
An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in Windows when the Win32k component fails to properly handle objects in memory, aka "Win32k Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability." This affects Windows 10, Windows 10 Servers.
Vulnerable Configurations
| Part | Description | Count |
|---|---|---|
| OS | 2 |
Common Weakness Enumeration (CWE)
Common Attack Pattern Enumeration and Classification (CAPEC)
- Flooding An attacker consumes the resources of a target by rapidly engaging in a large number of interactions with the target. This type of attack generally exposes a weakness in rate limiting or flow control in management of interactions. Since each request consumes some of the target's resources, if a sufficiently large number of requests must be processed at the same time then the target's resources can be exhausted. The degree to which the attack is successful depends upon the volume of requests in relation to the amount of the resource the target has access to, and other mitigating circumstances such as the target's ability to shift load or acquired additional resources to deal with the depletion. The more protected the resource and the greater the quantity of it that must be consumed, the more resources the attacker may need to have at their disposal. A typical TCP/IP flooding attack is a Distributed Denial-of-Service attack where many machines simultaneously make a large number of requests to a target. Against a target with strong defenses and a large pool of resources, many tens of thousands of attacking machines may be required. When successful this attack prevents legitimate users from accessing the service and can cause the target to crash. This attack differs from resource depletion through leaks or allocations in that the latter attacks do not rely on the volume of requests made to the target but instead focus on manipulation of the target's operations. The key factor in a flooding attack is the number of requests the attacker can make in a given period of time. The greater this number, the more likely an attack is to succeed against a given target.
- Excessive Allocation An attacker causes the target to allocate excessive resources to servicing the attackers' request, thereby reducing the resources available for legitimate services and degrading or denying services. Usually, this attack focuses on memory allocation, but any finite resource on the target could be the attacked, including bandwidth, processing cycles, or other resources. This attack does not attempt to force this allocation through a large number of requests (that would be Resource Depletion through Flooding) but instead uses one or a small number of requests that are carefully formatted to force the target to allocate excessive resources to service this request(s). Often this attack takes advantage of a bug in the target to cause the target to allocate resources vastly beyond what would be needed for a normal request. For example, using an Integer Attack, the attacker could cause a variable that controls allocation for a request to hold an excessively large value. Excessive allocation of resources can render a service degraded or unavailable to legitimate users and can even lead to crashing of the target.
- Resource Leak Exposure An attacker utilizes a resource leak on the target to deplete the quantity of the resource available to service legitimate requests. Resource leaks most often come in the form of memory leaks where memory is allocated but never released after it has served its purpose, however, theoretically, any other resource that can be reserved can be targeted if the target fails to release the reservation when the reserved resource block is no longer needed. In this attack, the attacker determines what activity results in leaked resources and then triggers that activity on the target. Since some leaks may be small, this may require a large number of requests by the attacker. However, this attack differs from a flooding attack in that the rate of requests is generally not significant. This is because the lost resources due to the leak accumulate until the target is reset, usually by restarting it. Thus, a resource-poor attacker who would be unable to flood the target can still utilize this attack. Resource depletion through leak differs from resource depletion through allocation in that, in the former, the attacker may not be able to control the size of each leaked allocation, but instead allows the leak to accumulate until it is large enough to affect the target's performance. When depleting resources through allocation, the allocated resource may eventually be released by the target so the attack relies on making sure that the allocation size itself is prohibitive of normal operations by the target.
Nessus
| NASL family | Windows : Microsoft Bulletins |
| NASL id | SMB_NT_MS18_JUN_4284835.NASL |
| description | The remote Windows host is missing security update 4284835. It is, therefore, affected by multiple vulnerabilities : - An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the (Human Interface Device) HID Parser Library driver improperly handles objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run processes in an elevated context. (CVE-2018-8169) - A memory corruption vulnerability exists when Windows Media Foundation improperly handles objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. There are multiple ways an attacker could exploit the vulnerability, such as by convincing a user to open a specially crafted document, or by convincing a user to visit a malicious webpage. The security update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how Windows Media Foundation handles objects in memory. (CVE-2018-8251) - A denial of service vulnerability exists when Windows improperly handles objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could cause a target system to stop responding. (CVE-2018-8205) - An denial of service vulnerability exists when Windows NT WEBDAV Minirdr attempts to query a WEBDAV directory. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could cause a denial of service. (CVE-2018-8175) - An information disclosure vulnerability exists when the Windows GDI component improperly discloses the contents of its memory. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could obtain information to further compromise the users system. There are multiple ways an attacker could exploit the vulnerability, such as by convincing a user to open a specially crafted document, or by convincing a user to visit an untrusted webpage. The security update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how the Windows GDI component handles objects in memory. (CVE-2018-8239) - A remote code execution vulnerability exists when HTTP Protocol Stack (Http.sys) improperly handles objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could execute arbitrary code and take control of the affected system. (CVE-2018-8231) - An information disclosure vulnerability exists when the Windows kernel improperly initializes objects in memory. (CVE-2018-8121) - A security feature bypass vulnerability exists in Device Guard that could allow an attacker to inject malicious code into a Windows PowerShell session. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could inject code into a trusted PowerShell process to bypass the Device Guard Code Integrity policy on the local machine. (CVE-2018-8201, CVE-2018-8211, CVE-2018-8212, CVE-2018-8215, CVE-2018-8221) - An information disclosure vulnerability exists when Microsoft Edge improperly handles objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could obtain information to further compromise the users system. (CVE-2018-8234) - An Elevation of Privilege vulnerability exists when Cortana retrieves data from user input services without consideration for status. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could execute commands with elevated permissions. (CVE-2018-8140) - A denial of service vulnerability exists in the HTTP 2.0 protocol stack (HTTP.sys) when HTTP.sys improperly parses specially crafted HTTP 2.0 requests. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could create a denial of service condition, causing the target system to become unresponsive. (CVE-2018-8226) - A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way that the scripting engine handles objects in memory in Internet Explorer. The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. (CVE-2018-8267) - An information disclosure vulnerability exists when the Windows kernel improperly handles objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could obtain information to further compromise the users system. (CVE-2018-8207) - An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in Windows when the Win32k component fails to properly handle objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. (CVE-2018-8233) - An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when NTFS improperly checks access. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run processes in an elevated context. (CVE-2018-1036) - A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Windows Domain Name System (DNS) DNSAPI.dll when it fails to properly handle DNS responses. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could run arbitrary code in the context of the Local System Account. (CVE-2018-8225) - A security feature bypass vulnerability exists when Microsoft Edge improperly handles requests of different origins. The vulnerability allows Microsoft Edge to bypass Same-Origin Policy (SOP) restrictions, and to allow requests that should otherwise be ignored. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could force the browser to send data that would otherwise be restricted. (CVE-2018-8235) - A remote code execution vulnerability exists in the way that the Chakra scripting engine handles objects in memory in Microsoft Edge. The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. (CVE-2018-8227, CVE-2018-8229) - A remote code execution vulnerability exists when Internet Explorer improperly accesses objects in memory. The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that an attacker could execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. (CVE-2018-0978) - An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when Windows Hyper-V instruction emulation fails to properly enforce privilege levels. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain elevated privileges on a target guest operating system. The host operating system is not vulnerable to this attack. This vulnerability by itself does not allow arbitrary code to be run. However, the vulnerability could be used in conjunction with one or more vulnerabilities (e.g. a remote code execution vulnerability and another elevation of privilege) that could take advantage of the elevated privileges when running. The update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how privileges are enforced by Windows Hyper-V instruction emulation. (CVE-2018-8219) - A remote code execution vulnerability exists when Microsoft Edge improperly accesses objects in memory. The vulnerability could corrupt memory in such a way that enables an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the current user. (CVE-2018-8110, CVE-2018-8236) - An information disclosure vulnerability exists when Edge improperly marks files. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could exfiltrate file contents from disk. For an attack to be successful, an attacker must persuade a user to open a malicious website. The security update addresses the vulnerability by properly marking files. (CVE-2018-0871) - A denial of service vulnerability exists in the way that the Windows Code Integrity Module performs hashing. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could cause a system to stop responding. Note that the denial of service condition would not allow an attacker to execute code or to elevate user privileges. However, the denial of service condition could prevent authorized users from using system resources. An attacker could host a specially crafted file in a website or SMB share. The attacker could also take advantage of compromised websites, or websites that accept or host user-provided content or advertisements, by adding specially crafted content that could exploit the vulnerability. However, in all cases an attacker would have no way to force users to view the attacker-controlled content. Instead, an attacker would have to convince users to take action, typically via an enticement in email or instant message, or by getting them to open an email attachment. The security update addresses the vulnerability by modifying how the Code Integrity Module performs hashing. (CVE-2018-1040) - A security feature bypass vulnerability exists in Internet Explorer that allows for bypassing Mark of the Web Tagging (MOTW). Failing to set the MOTW means that a large number of Microsoft security technologies are bypassed. (CVE-2018-8113) - A remote code execution vulnerability exists when Windows improperly handles objects in memory. An attacker who successfully exploited these vulnerabilities could take control of an affected system. (CVE-2018-8210, CVE-2018-8213) - An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in the way that the Windows Kernel API enforces permissions. An attacker who successfully exploited the vulnerability could impersonate processes, interject cross-process communication, or interrupt system functionality. (CVE-2018-0982) - An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists in Windows when Desktop Bridge does not properly manage the virtual registry. An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights. (CVE-2018-8208, CVE-2018-8214) |
| last seen | 2020-06-01 |
| modified | 2020-06-02 |
| plugin id | 110487 |
| published | 2018-06-12 |
| reporter | This script is Copyright (C) 2018-2019 and is owned by Tenable, Inc. or an Affiliate thereof. |
| source | https://www.tenable.com/plugins/nessus/110487 |
| title | KB4284835: Windows 10 Version 1803 and Windows Server Version 1803 June 2018 Security Update |
| code | |