Penetration Testing mailing list archives

Re: priviledge escalation techniques


From: lists <lists () innocence-lost net>
Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 12:19:40 -0700 (MST)


3) the one I've chosen, similar to (1) above. I've XP with the
Accessibility Tools installed by default. They monitor some keys, and if
for example you press SHIFT 5 times a popup appears where you can activate
and configure the accessibility tools. The program responsible for that is
sethc.exe, and the guys at Micro$oft comit the cardinal mistake of not
making IT check if SHIFT was pressed 5 times, but to include that in some
other part of the OS (kernel? ;-)
So if you press SHIFT 5 times, sethc.exe is executed, but doesn't matter
WHAT IS sethc.exe
You guess that, I replaced sethc.exe by a copy of cmd.exe
If I press that BEFORE login, a CLI as SYSTEM is started, I can launch
compmgmt.msc and add myself to the local administrators group (please note
that if you start it AFTER login, a CLI is started as your user).


How do you suppose one gets write access to sethc.exe without admin privs
in the first place? I cannot overwrite my sethc.exe, nor can I change the
system Path variables, and it gets prepended to my path before user
variables do- are you sure you didn't test this while logged in as an
admin?

jnf


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