Microsoft Windows Unquoted Service Path Privilege Escalation
Posted on 17 April 2020
This Metasploit module exploits a logic flaw due to how the lpApplicationName parameter is handled. When the lpApplicationName contains a space, the file name is ambiguous. Take this file path as example: C:program fileshello.exe; The Windows API will try to interpret this as two possible paths: C:program.exe, and C:program fileshello.exe, and then execute all of them. To some software developers, this is an unexpected behavior, which becomes a security problem if an attacker is able to place a malicious executable in one of these unexpected paths, sometimes escalate privileges if run as SYSTEM. Some software such as OpenVPN 2.1.1, OpenSSH Server 5, and others have the same problem.