Cyber Risks · Trail of Bits Blog

Writing Exploits with the Elderwood Kit (Part 1)

Summary: Trail of Bits analyzed the Elderwood exploit kit's tooling for developing browser exploits, finding it ships reusable components that bypass DEP via Flash-based heap spraying and ROP chains, and bypass ASLR by loading modules without the Dynamic Base flag, including Microsoft Office 2007/2010 and the Java 6 plugin. The kit abstracts these techniques so users need little to no understanding of memory layouts, heap allocations, or the underlying implementations, with today.swf reading a value set by config.html to select which built-in ROP chains to load.

Key Takeaway: The kit's ASLR bypass depends on outdated third-party plugins, and the authors estimate that even in a best-case scenario with no minor Java versions patched, only roughly 30% of website visitors could be successfully exploited - a reminder that unpatched Java 6 and Office plugins were the difference between a working exploit and a failed one.

Read the original at Trail of Bits Blog ↗

Topics
Zero-Days & Exploits
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