Microsoft Fixes Several Antimalware Engine Vulnerabilities Found by Google Researchers
Microsoft has released an out-of-band update for its Malware Protection Engine to patch several remote code execution and denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerabilities discovered by Google Project Zero researchers.
Version 1.1.13804.0 of the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, released on Thursday, addresses a total of eight vulnerabilities identified by various members of Google Project Zero, including Mateusz Jurczyk, Tavis Ormandy, Lokihart and Ian Beer.
Jurczyk has been credited for finding four of the security holes, namely CVE-2017-8536, CVE-2017-8538, CVE-2017-8537 and CVE-2017-8535. The researcher used fuzzing to find heap-based buffer overflow, NULL pointer dereference and other memory corruption vulnerabilities that can lead to arbitrary code execution or a crash of the Malware Protection Engine (MsMpEng) service.
On Friday, after learning of Microsoft’s update for the antimalware engine, Jurczyk published an advisory containing some technical information and proof-of-concept (PoC) code. Ormandy and Beer also made public advisories, including PoC code, for vulnerabilities patched in the latest version of the Malware Protection Engine.
According to Microsoft, the vulnerabilities exist due to the fact that the antimalware engine does not properly scan specially crafted files. An attacker can exploit them for remote code execution and DoS attacks by getting the engine to scan a malicious file, which can be accomplished via several methods.
“For example, an attacker could use a website to deliver a specially crafted file to the victim's system that is scanned when the website is viewed by the user,” Microsoft said. “An attacker could also deliver a specially crafted file via an email message or in an Instant Messenger message that is scanned when the file is opened. In addition, an attacker could take advantage of websites that accept or host user-provided content, to upload a specially crafted file to a shared location that is scanned by the Malware Protection Engine running on the hosting server.”
The vulnerabilities affect several Microsoft products that use the antimalware engine, including Windows Defender, Exchange Server, Windows Intune Endpoint Protection, Security Essentials, Endpoint Protection and Forefront Endpoint Protection. Users of these products do not have to take any action as the update has been applied automatically.
While Microsoft and Google have had some problems when it comes to vulnerability disclosures – Google Project Zero disclosed the details of several flaws in the past before patches were made available – Microsoft has been moving quickly to resolve Malware Protection Engine issues.
Earlier this month, it took the company less than three days to patch a critical remote code execution vulnerability found by Ormandy and Google Project Zero researcher Natalie Silvanovich. The flaws disclosed by Google last week were reported to Microsoft on May 12 and May 16.
Ormandy recently made available a tool for porting Windows dynamic link library (DLL) files to Linux in an effort to improve fuzzing. He demonstrated the tool’s capabilities by porting the Malware Protection Engine to Linux.
Porting the antimalware engine to Linux has made it easier for Google Project Zero researchers to conduct fuzzing and find vulnerabilities.
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