Security researcher and Pentester, Marcus Murray have found a new way to exploit windows servers just via a JPGE image file. A single malicious JPGE file gives attackers complete control of the compromised network.
Last week, In a live hack for the RSA conference in San Francisco, the hacker used a malicious JPEG to violate the system at an unnamed US Government agency that ran a vulnerable website that allows photo upload. This single photo upload of a vulnerable website leads to the compromise of the whole network.
Murray injected active content into the attributes of a JPEG picture, once compromised the target he elevated its privileges and compromise the domain controller into the network. If an attacker successfully hacks the domain controller he will gain complete control over the network. He said the attack is quite simple to run -
The attack technique relies on the lack of input validation on the client side. vulnerable uploading portals which allow attackers to upload malicious content because it carries .jpge extension. This vulnerable uploading option validated the images submitted by the users, but not the file extension types, this means that once uploaded and previewed, the files display as the text that has been inserted into active content fields rather than the expected image.
Last week, In a live hack for the RSA conference in San Francisco, the hacker used a malicious JPEG to violate the system at an unnamed US Government agency that ran a vulnerable website that allows photo upload. This single photo upload of a vulnerable website leads to the compromise of the whole network.
“I’m going to try to compromise the web server, then go for back end resources, and ultimately compromise a domain controller,” - he added.He further explains his way to exploit the target system via exploiting the technique to upload a remote access trojan (RAT) created using the popular Metasploit Penetration Testing Software. For the successful exploitation, he used a couple of tools and compilers which were running on the Windows server.
The attack technique relies on the lack of input validation on the client side. vulnerable uploading portals which allow attackers to upload malicious content because it carries .jpge extension. This vulnerable uploading option validated the images submitted by the users, but not the file extension types, this means that once uploaded and previewed, the files display as the text that has been inserted into active content fields rather than the expected image.
Below you can find the PoC video demonstration from RSA Conference showing how a single image (jpg file) can hack your organization's network.
So you can imagine that a simple input validation flaw in the system leads to the compromise of the whole network. I remembered a quote that I had read earlier is - "99.9% Security is 100% Vulnerable".