Vigil@nce: Windows Message Queuing, privilege elevation
August 2009 by Vigil@nce
SYNTHESIS OF THE VULNERABILITY
A local attacker can use an IOCTL on MSMQ in order to obtain
system privileges.
Severity: 2/4
Consequences: administrator access/rights
Provenance: user shell
Means of attack: no proof of concept, no attack
Ability of attacker: expert (4/4)
Confidence: confirmed by the editor (5/5)
Diffusion of the vulnerable configuration: high (3/3)
Creation date: 12/08/2009
IMPACTED PRODUCTS
– Microsoft Windows 2000
– Microsoft Windows 2003
– Microsoft Windows Vista
– Microsoft Windows XP
DESCRIPTION OF THE VULNERABILITY
The Message Queuing (MSMQ) service handles messages of a
distributed application. It is disabled by default.
A user can interact with this service by using an IOCTL on
mqac.sys. However, the service does not correctly validate
parameters of the IOCTL, which leads to a memory corruption.
A local attacker can therefore use an IOCTL on MSMQ in order to
obtain system privileges.
CHARACTERISTICS
Identifiers: 971032, BID-35969, CVE-2009-1922, MS09-040,
PT-2008-09, VIGILANCE-VUL-8940
http://vigilance.fr/vulnerability/Windows-Message-Queuing-privilege-elevation-8940