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APT37 used Internet Explorer Zero

criticalThreat actor exploited in the wildimportance 60CVE-2022-41128CVE-2017-0199

Vulnerabilities mentionedAll →

CVEVulnerabilityCVSSEPSSFlagsAffectedExposurePublished
CVE-2017-0199
Remote Code Execution in Microsoft Office and WordPad via crafted document files

CVE-2017-0199 is a remote code execution vulnerability in Microsoft Office and WordPad that stems from improper parsing of specially crafted files. Attackers trigger it by getting a user to open a malicious document, after which attacker-controlled code executes with the privileges of the logged-in user. Anyone running the affected Microsoft Office or WordPad software is exposed, and CISA notes the flaw has been leveraged in ransomware campaigns; no CVSS score is available in the source data. The flaw was added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2021-11-03, and EPSS assigns a 99.9% probability of exploitation within 30 days (100th percentile), indicating active, ongoing exploitation.

Do: Apply Microsoft's security updates for Office and Windows per vendor instructions, as required by CISA's KEV catalog; the flaw was publicly reported as fixed in Microsoft's April 2017 security updates. Until patched, treat unsolicited Office documents and email attachments as high-risk, since exploitation requires a user to open a crafted file. Verify that all Office and WordPad installations across the estate—especially endpoints that handle untrusted documents—have received the update.

7.8100% KEV ransomware PoC ×6
  • Microsoft Office
  • Microsoft WordPad
masshundreds of millions of Office installations worldwide (exact count unknown)
CVE-2022-41128
Out-of-bounds Write RCE in Microsoft Windows JScript9 Scripting Engine

CVE-2022-41128 is a remote code execution flaw in the JScript9 scripting language on Microsoft Windows, classed by the CWE taxonomy as an out-of-bounds write (CWE-787), meaning crafted input can write past the end of an allocated memory buffer. Microsoft's description is limited, but flaws of this type in scripting engines are typically triggered when the engine processes attacker-crafted script content, such as script embedded in a web page or document. Successful exploitation would let an attacker execute arbitrary code in the context of the affected process on the target Windows system. Any Windows deployment that processes content through the JScript9 engine is affected, which spans a broad share of the Windows installed base. The flaw was added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog on 2022-11-08, indicating confirmed in-the-wild exploitation; no public proof-of-concept is known, EPSS puts the 30-day exploitation probability at 24.6% (98th percentile), and ransomware use is unknown.

Do: Apply Microsoft's Windows security updates per vendor instructions without delay, prioritizing internet-facing and user-workstation systems because the flaw is KEV-listed as actively exploited. Until patched, limit exposure to untrusted script-bearing web content and documents from unverified sources, and verify remediation status against Microsoft's update guidance.

8.825% KEV
  • Microsoft Windows
mass≈1 billion+ Windows devices (order of magnitude; the engine ships with Windows itself)
Full article371 words · extracted from securityaffairs.com · click to collapse

Pierluigi Paganini December 08, 2022

Google warns that the North Korea-linked APT37 group is exploiting Internet Explorer zero-day flaw to spread malware.

North Korea-linked APT37 group (aka ScarCruft, Reaper, and Group123) actively exploited an Internet Explorer zero-day vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2022-41128, in attacks aimed at South Korean users.

Google Threat Analysis Group researchers discovered the zero-day vulnerability in late October 2022, it was exploited by APT37 using specially crafted documents.

The attackers attempted to capitalize on the recent Itaewon Halloween crowd crush to trick users into opening the weaponized document and infecting their systems.

“These malicious documents exploited an Internet Explorer 0-day vulnerability in the JScript engine, CVE-2022-41128. Our policy is to quickly report vulnerabilities to vendors, and within a few hours of discovering this 0-day, we reported it to Microsoft and patches were released to protect users from these attacks.” reads the post published by TAG.

The document downloaded a rich text file (RTF) template from a remote server, which in turn fetched remote HTML content. Experts pointed out that Office renders this HTML content using Internet Explorer (IE). Using this technique the attackers are able to trigger IE zero-day using weaponized Office documents since 2017 (e.g. CVE-2017-0199).

TAG determined that the APT group abused the zero-day vulnerability in the JScript engine of Internet Explorer.

The flaw is an incorrect JIT optimization issue leading to a type confusion that resides within “jscript9.dll”, the JavaScript engine of Internet Explorer. An attacker can exploit the flaw to execute arbitrary code when the victim visits an attacker-controlled website.

TAG also identified other documents that were used to exploit the same vulnerability, the experts speculate they may be part of the same campaign.

The researchers did not recover the final payload, likely the document was used to deliver one of the malware in the arsenal of APT37, such as ROKRATBLUELIGHT, and DOLPHIN

TAG reported the vulnerability to Microsoft on October 31, 2022, the IT giant addressed it on November 8, 2022.

Google TAG shared indicators of compromise (IOCs) for this campaign.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, Internet Explorer)

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