I can’t say that I’m overly surprised. I had loaded up a copy of 2008 that I received at Black Hat last year into a virtual machine. I poked around in it for a couple minutes and shut it down. I just didn’t have the stomach to deal with it at the time. Well, it appears that others had the intestinal fortitude that I was sorely lacking.
From eWeek:
Cesar Cerrudo, founder and CEO of Argeniss Information Security, in Parana, Argentina, says the weaknesses could lead to privilege escalation attacks opens the door for a skilled hacker to take complete control of the operating system.
“[We found] from design issues that were not identified by Microsoft engineers during the Security Development Lifecycle (SDL), and allows accounts commonly used by Windows services — NETWORK SERVICE and LOCAL SERVICE — to bypass new Windows services protection mechanisms and elevate privileges, Cerrudo explained.
He said the discovery also affects Internet Information Services 7 in the default configuration, allowing ASP.NET applications to “completely compromise” operating system security.
Cerrudo, a security researcher who is highly regarded for his work on database security, said the problem also afects Windows Vista, Windows XP and Windows 2003.
“On Windows XP and Windows 2003 the problem is especially severe since any Windows service, even when running under a low privileged account, can potentially break through the security protections and fully compromise the operating system. This includes all web applications deployed on Internet Information Services 6,” he added.
He’ll be releasing details of his fun with Windows at HITB 2008 Dubai.