IE Zero Day CVE-2013-3897 -- You've been protected for more than a week.
Vulnerabilities mentionedAll →
| CVE | Vulnerability | CVSS | EPSS | Flags | Affected | Exposure | Published |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CVE-2013-3897 | Use-After-Free RCE in Microsoft Internet Explorer (CVE-2013-3897) CVE-2013-3897 is a use-after-free vulnerability in the CDisplayPointer component of Microsoft Internet Explorer that enables remote code execution when a user views attacker-controlled web content. It is triggered by luring a user to a malicious or compromised webpage where Internet Explorer references memory that has already been freed, allowing the attacker to corrupt memory and execute arbitrary code with the rights of the logged-on user. Any user or organization browsing with Internet Explorer on Windows was exposed; the flaw was fixed in Microsoft's October 2013 Patch Tuesday cumulative IE security updates, and because Internet Explorer is now retired, remaining exposure sits on legacy Windows estates and IE-dependent legacy web applications. Exploitation is confirmed: the bug was exploited as a zero-day in targeted attacks when disclosed in late September 2013, it is listed in CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog (added 2022-03-03; ransomware use unknown), and EPSS estimates a 77.5% probability of exploitation within 30 days (100th percentile). No public proof-of-concept exploit is documented in the source data, but confirmed in-the-wild use makes patching or browser migration urgent. Do: Apply Microsoft's October 2013 Patch Tuesday cumulative Internet Explorer security update (MS13-080) per vendor/CISA instructions, prioritizing internet-facing and legacy Windows hosts where IE is still used for browsing or legacy web applications. Because IE is retired and no longer receives security fixes, migrate any remaining IE-dependent users to a supported modern browser and hunt for indicators of the historical in-the-wild exploitation. Ransomware use is unknown per the KEV entry and no public PoC is available, so treat patching and migration, not signature detection, as the primary control. | — | 77% | KEV |
| masshundreds of millions of legacy Windows systems with Internet Explorer historically (IE shipped with essentially every Windows PC); current active exposure is… |
Full article276 words · extracted from blog.talosintelligence.com · click to collapse
Tuesday, October 8, 2013 16:49
A little over a week ago the VRT discovered a very interesting bit of javascript on a popular JS unpacker site. Several things immediately piqued our interest in this sample. First of all, we found multiple calls to Math.atan2() with curious parameters:

This is a popular technique used in debugging exploits.
A breakpoint can be set in the following way:

So that later on when the exploit is ran, windbg will print out the second parameter of Math.atan2 calls, in the case above "after gc". Further inspection of the sample revealed that it checks the systemLanguage of the browser and deactivates itself if it doesn't find MSIE 8.0 in the User-Agent combined with either "ko" or "ja" system languages:

We suspect that the "ko" or "js" language packs were intended targets for ROP exploitation. After a quick run with windbg attached we are greeted with a crash:

Below you can see the constructor for CDisplayPointer which creates a 0x48 byte HeapAlloc which is freed and the subsequently used:

The VRT maintains a working exploit for this vulnerability which leverages a ROP chain from hxds.dll (MS Help Data Services Module) which is installed with Microsoft Office. Even before a MS advisory appeared for this use-after-free vulnerability the VRT released coverage in the form of a TRUFFLE rule. TRUFFLE rules provide a way for the VRT to release cutting edge coverage without exposing threats to the public through a plaintext rule. The SIDs for the TRUFFLE rules covering this vuln were 28091 & 28092. Now that the information is public our customers can find coverage for this vulnerability in SIDs 28207 & 28208.
Text extracted automatically; images, tables and formatting may be missing. Original: https://blog.talosintelligence.com/ie-zero-day-cve-2013-3897-youve-been/