Researchers 'Break' Microsoft's Edge With Zero-Day Remote Code Exploit (itpro.co.uk) 50
Exploit developers Yushi Laing and Alexander Kochkov have teased a zero-day exploit for Microsoft's Edge browser that can allow a malicious actor to run commands on a user's machine. "Laing teased the 'stable exploit' for the Microsoft-developed web browser last week with an image that appeared to show the Windows Calculator app launched from a web browser, after working on the project for just under a week," reports IT PRO. From the report: The researcher had initially been looking into three remote code execution bugs for Firefox as part of an 'exploit chain', but struggled to establish code for the third. He then found two similar flaws on Microsoft Edge using the Wadi Fuzzer app developed by SensePost. Laing told BleepingComputer the pair wanted to develop a stable exploit for Microsoft Edge and escape the sandbox, termed as an exploit that force-crashes and incorrectly reloads an app with manipulated permissions.
This would allow a user to run functions, and access other apps, beyond its normal permissions, as well as access data from other applications. They were also looking for a way to effectively seize control of a machine by escalating execution privileges to "system." They published a proof-of-concept for the Edge exploit in a short clip which shows the team using the browser to open the landing page for Google Chrome via Firefox.
This would allow a user to run functions, and access other apps, beyond its normal permissions, as well as access data from other applications. They were also looking for a way to effectively seize control of a machine by escalating execution privileges to "system." They published a proof-of-concept for the Edge exploit in a short clip which shows the team using the browser to open the landing page for Google Chrome via Firefox.
Business model: Sell info to anyone who pays. (Score:2, Informative)
Microsoft is poorly managed? Plenty of evidence. [slashdot.org] (Oct. 20, 2018)
That business model is not going well:
A watchdog group pretended to be Russian and bought 'divisive' Google ads -- now, Google is blasting the group for its ties to Oracle. [businessinsider.com] (Sep. 4, 2018)
Facebook discloses possible election meddling by Russia, foreign actors on eve of midterms. [usatoday.com] (
Firefox (Score:1)
Makes me happy to be running Firefox ... on a Mac.
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You think Firefox doesn't collect user data and statistics?
FOSS (Score:3)
Chakra is open source. What do MS have to lose by githubbing the rest of the browser?
By the "many eyes" theory, security bugs would be dealt with greater expedience if a version of (let's call it) 'Edgium' were available in fedora and debian repositories. And the benefit for Windows 10 is web site compatibility that people might actually test for Edge cases, pun intended, if they could still develop under Linux/macos.
Re:FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Chakra is open source. What do MS have to lose by githubbing the rest of the browser?
Exposing just how much information they are gathering about their users would be damaging, especially if the EU uses it to rule against them.
Yeah, they got plenty of money to lose.
Re: FOSS (Score:5, Interesting)
Chromium is open source but Google adds whatever special sauce they please to Chrome downloads.
MS would be free to pursue a similar policy.
Re: FOSS (Score:2)
Certainly liberating the code won't itself form a community overnight but Chromium and Gecko have found uses beyond Google and Mozilla respectively.
Re:FOSS (Score:5, Insightful)
Chakra is open source. What do MS have to lose by githubbing the rest of the browser?
Simple: Somebody might recompile it without all the user-spying and data-gathering code.
Who uses Edge anyway? (Score:1)
I'm sure most of us have only used Edge occasionally at best and many probably only to download another browser. Every browser has security issues at times, the question is, how fast do these issues get fixed? Microsoft is sort of slow with this because Edge get's major updates in Windows feature upgrades and security ones in monthly Windows updates. Microsoft has considered separating Edge updates from Windows but has yet to do so. Almost any other major browser is going to be better then Edge addressing s
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Every browser has security issues at times, the question is, how fast do these issues get fixed? Microsoft is sort of slow with this because Edge get's major updates in Windows feature upgrades and security ones in monthly Windows updates.
Severe vulnerabilities are patched out-of-band. Microsoft does it all the time.
Safety (Score:3)
Quite some time ago I came to a conclusion that the safest way to browse the web is to run your web browser in a VM or on a separate device which your log into via network. And, no, running it under a separate user account doesn't cut it because your kernel and local listening daemons are fully exposed to the browser and might be used to circumvent users accounts separation, not to mention various (mostly theoretical but still real) CPU vulnerabilities. Too bad, I haven't followed my own conclusion and I still happily run the browser under my user account without any protections whatsoever, except for uBlock Origin and NoScript.
The reason VM is not particularly well-suited for browsing the web is because 2D/3D acceleration doesn't work well in it, and also there's latency involved which makes the whole experience not exactly perfect - simple web sites work well but anything with heavy JS code and/or various graphical effects might suffer.
Re: Safety (Score:2)
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There is a product [rohde-schwarz.com] which does this, albeit in a very kludgy way. It would be trivial to provide a similar solution based on QEMU, linux/*BSD and some browser, but I guess most people who want that just roll their own.
There are several problems involved with this:
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The full list is a lot longer than that:
https://medium.com/secjuice/a-... [medium.com]
https://www.citrix.com/virtual... [citrix.com]
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Interesting links!
I really love the statement "seem to be focusing their messaging on high risk internet users and C-level employees", which pretty much sums up, why so few security products successfully protect companies.
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give it up (Score:2)
0-day (Score:1)
Itâ(TM)s Yushi Liang NOT Yushi Laing (Score:1)
Edge SUCKS (Score:1)
What I told the people to do was. When they try to open with explorer, ge
Crackers release 0-dat crack? (Score:2)
What ever happened to giving advanced notice before release? Not enough notoriety?