Skip to main content

Flaw In Microsoft's Azure, an App and Web Hosting Services, Could Have Let Hackers Take Over Cloud Servers.

Cybersecurity researchers at Check Point on 30-January-2020, disclosed details of two recently patched potentially dangerous vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure services that, if exploited, could have allowed hackers to target several businesses that run their web and mobile apps on Azure.
Azure App Service is a fully-managed integrated service that enables users to create web and mobile apps for any platform or device, and easily integrate them with SaaS solutions, on-premises apps to automate business processes.
According to a report researchers shared with The Hacker News, the first security vulnerability (CVE-2019-1234) is a request spoofing issue that affected Azure Stack, a hybrid cloud computing software solution by Microsoft.

If exploited, the issue would have enabled a remote hacker to unauthorizedly access screenshots and sensitive information of any virtual machine running on Azure infrastructure—it doesn't matter if they're running on a shared, dedicated or isolated virtual machines.
According to researchers, this flaw is exploitable through Microsoft Azure Stack Portal, an interface where users can access clouds they have created using Azure Stack.
By leveraging an insure API, researchers found a way to get the virtual machine name and ID, hardware information like cores, total memory of targeted machines, and then used it with another unauthenticated HTTP request to grab screenshots, as shown.
microsoft azure screenshots
Whereas, the second issue (CVE-2019-1372) is a remote code execution flaw that affected the Azure App Service on Azure Stack, which would have enabled a hacker to take complete control over the entire Azure server and consequently take control over an enterprises' business code.
What's more interesting is that an attacker can exploit both issues by creating a free user account with Azure Cloud and running malicious functions on it or sending unauthenticated HTTP requests to the Azure Stack user portal.
Check Point published a detailed technical post on the second flaw, but in brief, it resided in the way DWASSVC, a service responsible for managing and running tenants' apps and IIS worker processes, which actually run the tenant application, communicate with each other for defined tasks.

Since Azure Stack failed to check the length of a buffer before copying memory to it, an attacker could have exploited the issue by sending a specially crafted message to DWASSVC service, allowing it to execute malicious code on the server as the highest NT AUTHORITY/SYSTEM privilege.
"So how can an attacker send a message to DWASSVC (DWASInterop.dll)? By design, when running the C# Azure function, it runs in the context of the worker (w3wp.exe)," the researchers said.
"This lets an attacker the possibility to enumerate the currently opened handles. That way, he can find the already opened named pipe handle and send a specially crafted message."
Check Point researcher Ronen Shustin, who discovered both vulnerabilities, responsibly reported the issues to Microsoft last year, preventing hackers from causing severe damage and chaos.
After patching both issues late last year, the company awarded Shustin with 40,000 USD under its Azure bug bounty program.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

UGANDA ELECTORAL COMMISSION TO ELIMINATE NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION CARDS (IDs) FOR 2021 GENERAL ELECTIONS.

The elimination of using National IDs (Ndagamuntu) for the 2021 elections should not have come as a surprise. One would be very NAIVE to think that Bobi Wine has not prepared for this in his Business Plan under the RISK section. It is public knowledge that our EC is not independent.  It is also public knowledge that Military Dictator Yoweri Museveni will never lose an election. What stunned us this morning is when we noticed that on social media, people were mocking Bobi with his "get your Ndagamuntu".  We are on record for saying to all Our readers that the National ID is like Apartheid in South Africa. Students of History would know how those IDs were being used to arrest people, deny them jobs, deny them basic services. Consequently, Bobi was not wrong and will never be wrong on the Ndagamuntu. Except the ones attacking him and mocking him forget that in Uganda, now, no National ID (Ndagamuntu), no service.  If you have not been denied registering your child i...

Here is Why Our Utterances For Praying Jesus And God To Come Liberate Ugandans, May Be Misplaced. This Phrase is like inform of a Letter To Some Categorized Section Of Ugandans.

https://m.facebook.com/yusufosuta/photos/a.1896701010557789/2070383359856219/?type=3 OPEN LETTER TO NRM SUPPORTERS - NATIONAL ROBBERS MOVEMENT. .................................................................................. Last week of March, a friend told me to pray for Uganda.  I told him that he was an Idiot and we have prayed for too long and we are still hungry and sick and Jesus is not coming soon to liberate us. He then ignored the STUPID and sent me a picture we all now know.  It got me totally messed up.  This guy was telling me to pray then sends a picture of men bowing down in blood.  He might have meant guns but I blocked him because his utterances of praying for Uganda were misplaced. I unblocked him 3 weeks later and asked him about praying and assassinations.  His reply "eithrr prayers or guns or both". I hate violence with a passion.  So he is now blocked in like FOREVER. Do you feel safe?  Do not feel safe. Uganda regim...

Parliament Urges Government to Provide Shs 4 Billion to Media Houses to Run Awareness Campaign on Tourism in Uganda.

Parliament also urged Gov’t to provide additional Shs4Bn to UTB to engage international and national media houses in production of positive media stories for improved destination image, following reports of drop in number of tourists from US, Europe and China visiting Uganda. "The National Development Plan targeted to cumulatively attract 281,760 International Tourist arrivals from US, Europe & China but only 67,252 arrivals were registered by the end of the first half of FY 2023/24. The U.S, Europe & China were key target source for leisure tourist who stay longer than business tourists. However, statistics show that international arrivals from the aforementioned areas have continue to drop. The UTB requires Shs4Bn to engage international & national media houses in production of positive tourism stories to improve destination perception in light of recent controversies that shade the destination in a bad light. However, this has remained unfunded,” said La...