Ending the Love Affair with Exploit Shield
Summary: Trail of Bits analyzed ExploitShield's Browser edition and found it works by hooking functions commonly used by shellcode to drop and execute programs, checking the return address on the stack against a module list populated only once at startup. The author concludes the system is predictable, can be bypassed trivially by an attacker who knows it is present, and that its driver exposes an interface accessible to all users, including unprivileged ones, creating additional attack surface.
Why it matters: The analysis found two implementation bugs in how ExploitShield builds its module list - no mutual exclusion when populating it, and enumeration performed only once - and notes that any mistake in the driver's IOCTL handling could yield a kernel-level vulnerability compromising the entire system. A defensive product that adds kernel attack surface while being trivially bypassable by anyone who studies it leaves the organization worse off than the threat it was bought to address.
Read the original at Trail of Bits Blog ↗
- Topics
- Vulnerabilities & Patching
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