Rapid7 Vulnerability & Exploit Database

AppXSvc Hard Link Privilege Escalation

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AppXSvc Hard Link Privilege Escalation

Disclosed
04/09/2019
Created
07/15/2019

Description

There exists a privilege escalation vulnerability for Windows 10 builds prior to build 17763. Due to the AppXSvc's improper handling of hard links, a user can gain full privileges over a SYSTEM-owned file. The user can then utilize the new file to execute code as SYSTEM. This module employs a technique using the Diagnostics Hub Standard Collector Service (DiagHub) which was discovered by James Forshaw to load and execute a DLL as SYSTEM.

Author(s)

  • Nabeel Ahmed
  • James Forshaw
  • Shelby Pace

Platform

Windows

Development

Module Options

To display the available options, load the module within the Metasploit console and run the commands 'show options' or 'show advanced':

msf > use exploit/windows/local/appxsvc_hard_link_privesc
msf exploit(appxsvc_hard_link_privesc) > show targets
    ...targets...
msf exploit(appxsvc_hard_link_privesc) > set TARGET < target-id >
msf exploit(appxsvc_hard_link_privesc) > show options
    ...show and set options...
msf exploit(appxsvc_hard_link_privesc) > exploit

Time is precious, so I don’t want to do something manually that I can automate. Leveraging the Metasploit Framework when automating any task keeps us from having to re-create the wheel as we can use the existing libraries and focus our efforts where it matters.

– Jim O’Gorman | President, Offensive Security

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