Trend has patched that problem and another remote execution flaw

A discovery by a well-known Google security researcher provides further proof how antivirus programs designed to shield computers from attacks can sometimes provide a doorway for hackers.

Tavis Ormandy, an information security engineer with Google, wrote he found bugs in Trend Micro's antivirus product that could allow remote code execution by any website and steal all of a users' passwords.

The security firm has confirmed it has released an automatic update that fixes the problems.

"As part of our standard vulnerability response process we worked with him to identify and address the vulnerability," wrote Christopher Budd, global threat communications manager at Trend Micro, in an email on Monday. "Customers are now getting protections through automatic updates."

Ormandy posted emails he exchanged with Trend officials, occasionally expressing his frustration that the company wasn't moving fast enough.

"So this means anyone on the internet can steal all of your passwords completely silently, as well as execute arbitrary code with zero user interaction," Ormandy wrote. "I really hope the gravity of this is clear to you, because I'm astonished about this."

Trend's antivirus product has a password manager, and users can elect to export their passwords to it. The password manager is written in JavaScript and opens up multiple HTTP remote procedure call ports to handle API requests, Ormandy wrote.

In 30 seconds, Ormandy wrote he found one that would accept remote code. He also found an API that allowed him to access passwords stored in the manager.

Overall, Ormandy wrote that he found over 70 APIs exposed to the Internet, not all of which he had investigated for security issues. He suggested Trend should hire an external consultancy to audit the code.

Antivirus applications run with high-level privileges on operating systems, which means that exploiting a vulnerability can give an attacker deep access to a computer.

Dozens of serious vulnerabilities have been found in the last seven months in antivirus products from vendors including Kaspersky Lab, ESET, Avast, AVG Technologies, Intel Security (formerly McAfee) and Malwarebytes.

Read more

Security vulnerabilities found in support software from Lenovo, Toshiba, and Dell

Security flaws pile up in support applications installed by PC manufacturers

Lenovo ThinkPad X240 (2) Credit: Lenovo

The number of vulnerabilities discovered in technical support applications installed on PCs by manufacturers keeps piling up. New exploits have been published for flaws in Lenovo Solution Center, Toshiba Service Station and Dell System Detect.

The most serious flaws appear to be in Lenovo Solution Center and could allow a malicious Web page to execute code on Lenovo Windows-based computers with system privileges.

The flaws were discovered by a hacker who uses the online aliases slipstream and RoL and who released a proof-of-concept exploit for them last week. This prompted the CERT Coordination Center at Carnegie Mellon University to publish a security advisory.

One of the issues is caused by the LSCTaskService, which is created by the Lenovo Solution Center and runs with SYSTEM privileges. This service opens an HTTP daemon on port 55555 that can receive commands. One of those commands is called RunInstaller and executes files placed in the %APPDATA%\LSC\Local Store folder.

Any local user can write to this directory, regardless of their privilege, but the files are executed as the SYSTEM account. This means that a restricted user can exploit the logic flaw to gain full system access.

Furthermore, there is a directory traversal flaw that can be exploited to trick the Lenovo Solution Center to execute code from arbitrary locations, so an attacker doesn’t even need to place files in the aforementioned Local Store folder.

Finally, the LSCTaskService is vulnerable to cross-site request forgery (CSRF), an attack method through which a malicious website can relay rogue requests through the user’s browser. This means that, in order to exploit the previous two flaws, an attacker doesn’t even need to have local access to the system where the Lenovo Solution Center is installed and can simply trick the user to visit a specially crafted Web page.

In a security advisory on its website, Lenovo said that it is currently investigating the vulnerability report and will provide a fix as soon as possible. Until then, concerned users can uninstall the Lenovo Solution Center in order to mitigate the risk, the company said.

Slipstream also published proof-of-concept exploits for two other, lower-impact, vulnerabilities—one in the Toshiba Service Station and one in Dell System Detect (DSD), a tool that users are prompted to install when they click the “Detect Product” button on Dell’s support website.

The Toshiba Service Station application creates a service called TMachInfo that runs as SYSTEM and receives commands via UDP port 1233 on the local host. One of those commands is called Reg.Read and can be used to read most of the Windows registry with system privileges, according to the hacker.

“I have no idea what to do with it, but someone else might,” slipstream wrote in the exploit comments.

The flaw in DSD apparently stems from the way Dell attempted to fix a previous vulnerability. According to slipstream, the company implemented RSA-1024 signatures to authenticate commands, but put them in a place on its website where attackers can obtain them.

These can be used as a crude bypass method for Windows’ User Account Control (UAC). In this context, the bypass means that “if DSD isn’t elevated, we annoy the user with elevation requests until they click yes,” the hacker said.

This is not the first time when vulnerabilities have been found in support tools installed on Lenovo or Dell computers.

Toshiba and Dell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read more