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SrvSvc DoS confirmed


From: Dave Aitel <dave () immunitysec com>
Date: Tue, 22 Nov 2005 13:27:34 -0500

Well, I can confirm (as can anyone in our Partner's program) that the srvsvc DoS works against up2date XP SP2, or at least, that it works against Justine's laptop. I'm fairly impressed with how well XP SP2 handles a memory overload attack. It chugs along even with no ram left quite well. I can only imagine they have all the ram they need to run explorer and the desktop pre-allocated and you can't kick it out. Things get pretty choppy, of course, but it's at least...viewable. I think a few processes died maybe. It's hard to tell.

So to sum up:
XP SP2 is vulnerable to a memory denial of service from remote anonymous users via named pipes or other MSRPC. This is a lopsided attack and not a simple memory leak - I don't have to send millions of bytes, just about a hundred, and the target allocates as much ram as I want it to and then gets "funny". I imagine this is more annoying (aka catastrophic) if you're trying to run an Exchange server or something. I haven't tested on 2003 yet. That's next. :>

The srvsvc attack also works against the Win2K image I tested.

-dave



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