Save The Environment (Variable): Hijacking Legitimate Applications with a Minimal Footprint
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Presented at DEF CON 30 by
Wietze Beukema - Save The Environment (Variable): Hijacking Legitimate Applications with a Minimal Footprint Wietze Beukema, Threat Detection & Response at CrowdStrike, He/Him Presentation Title: Save The Environment (Variable): Hijacking Legitimate Applications with a Minimal Footprint Length of presentation: 45 minutes Demo, Tool DLL Hijacking, being a well-known technique for executing malicious payloads via trusted executables, has been scrutinised extensively, to the point where defensive measures are in a much better position to detect abuse. To bypass detection, stealthier and harder-to-detect alternatives need to come into play. In this presentation, we will take a closer look at how process-level Environment Variables can be abused for taking over legitimate applications. Taking a systemic approach, we will demonstrate that over 80 Windows-native executables are vulnerable to this special type of DLL Hijacking. As this raises additional opportunities for User Account Control (UAC) bypass and Privilege Escalation, we will discuss the value and further implications of this technique and these findings. SPEAKER BIO: Wietze has been hacking around with computers for years. Originally from the Netherlands, he currently works in Threat Detection & Response at CrowdStrike in London. As a threat hunting enthusiast and security researcher, he has presented his findings on topics including attacker emulation, command-line obfuscation and DLL Hijacking at a variety of security conferences. By sharing his research, publishing related tools and his involvement in the open source LOLBAS project, he aims to give back to the community he learnt so much from. https://twitter.com/wietze https://wietzebeukema.nl REFERENCES: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/win...s-winternl-peb https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/?p=15083 https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/pow...powershell-7.2 https://wietze.github.io/blog/hijacking-dlls-in-windows https://www.fortinet.com/blog/threat...bles-expansion