Microsoft Researcher to Unveil 4 OpenVPN Zero-Day Vulnerabilities at Black Hat USA 2024
Microsoft’s Senior Security Researcher Vladimir Tokarev will detail a series of critical zero-day vulnerabilities in OpenVPN, the world’s leading VPN solution, used by millions of endpoints globally at the upcoming Black Hat USA 2024 conference. This discovery, codenamed “OVPNX,” exposes profound security risks affecting a broad array of platforms including Windows, iOS, macOS, Android, and BSD, potentially impacting thousands of companies worldwide.
The “OVPNX: 4 Zero-Days Leading to RCE, LPE and KCE (via BYOVD) Affecting Millions of OpenVPN Endpoints Across the Globe” presentation, set to be presented in detail at Black Hat USA 2024, identifies four zero-day vulnerabilities within OpenVPN’s repositories. OpenVPN, known for its robust security features, operates as a complex, multi-process system that spans different privilege levels, including interactions with kernel components. The vulnerabilities discovered exploit these intricate system interactions and reliance on OS APIs, unveiling significant weaknesses that malicious actors could leverage.
The exploit chain begins with a remote code execution (RCE) attack targeting OpenVPN’s plugin mechanism. From there, the vulnerabilities escalate rapidly:
- Remote Code Execution (RCE): Attackers initiate the exploit by targeting vulnerabilities in OpenVPN’s plugin mechanism, potentially allowing the execution of arbitrary code on the system.
- Local Privilege Escalation (LPE): The attack progresses to exploit a stack overflow in the OpenVPN system service, which crashes the NT System service and triggers a named pipe instance creation race condition.
- Kernel Code Execution (KCE) via BYOVD: The final stage of the attack chain involves reclaiming OpenVPN’s named pipe resource, allowing attackers to impersonate a privileged user and load a vulnerable signed driver to execute code at the kernel level.
This sophisticated attack chain underscores a highly advanced method of exploiting OpenVPN, which could lead to complete system compromise, data breaches, and potentially, widespread network disruptions.
The upcoming presentation at Black Hat USA 2024 will dissect these vulnerabilities and provide critical mitigation techniques to shield networks from potential exploits. Attendees will gain insights into defensive strategies that can be immediately applied to protect their systems against these severe vulnerabilities. A live demonstration of the exploit chain will offer a practical view of how these attacks occur and how organizations can mitigate them effectively.
The Black Hat USA 2024 event will be held in Mandalay Bay Convention Center, from Sat, Aug 3, 2024, to Thu, Aug 8, 2024.
