This document dives into the thrilling world of CVE-2024-21111, a delightful vulnerability in Oracle VM VirtualBox that just loves to wreak havoc on Windows hosts. We’ll be dissecting this gem from every possible angle, because who doesn’t love a good security nightmare?
This document provides a top-notch summary of the vulnerability, offering insights for security professionals and other stakeholders who just can’t get enough of dealing with these kinds of issues. The analysis is a must-read for anyone who enjoys understanding the risks associated with CVE-2024-21111 and implementing measures to prevent their systems from becoming the next victim. Enjoy!
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This document provides a comprehensive analysis of CVE-2024-21111, a critical vulnerability in Oracle VM VirtualBox affecting Windows hosts. The analysis will cover various aspects of the vulnerability, including its technical details, exploitation mechanisms, potential impacts on different industries.
This document provides a high-quality summary of the vulnerability, offering valuable insights for security professionals and other stakeholders across various industries. The analysis is beneficial for understanding the risks associated with CVE-2024-21111 and implementing effective measures to safeguard systems against potential attacks.
CVE-2024-21111 is a significant security vulnerability identified in Oracle VM VirtualBox, specifically affecting Windows hosts. This vulnerability is present in versions of VirtualBox prior to 7.0.16. It allows a low privileged attacker with logon access to the infrastructure where Oracle VM VirtualBox is executed to potentially take over the system
An attacker exploiting this vulnerability could achieve unauthorized control over the affected Oracle VM VirtualBox. The specific technical mechanism involves local privilege escalation through symbolic link following, which can lead to arbitrary file deletion and movement.
📌 Vulnerability Type: Local Privilege Escalation (LPE) allows a low privileged attacker who already has access to the system to gain higher privileges.
📌 Attack Vector and Complexity: The CVSS 3.1 vector (CVSS: 3.1/AV: L/AC: L/PR: L/UI: N/S: U/C: H/I: H/A: H) indicates that the attack vector is local (AV: L), meaning the attacker needs local access to the host. The attack complexity is low (AC: L), and no user interaction (UI: N) is required. The privileges required are low (PR: L), suggesting that an attacker with basic user privileges can exploit this vulnerability.
📌 Impact: The impacts on confidentiality, integrity, and availability are all rated high (C: H/I: H/A: H), indicating that an exploit could lead to a complete compromise of the affected system’s confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
📌 Exploitation Method: The vulnerability can be exploited through symbolic link (symlink) attacks. This involves manipulating symbolic links to redirect operations intended for legitimate files or directories to other targets, which the attacker controls. This can lead to arbitrary file deletion or movement, potentially allowing the attacker to execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges.
📌 Specific Mechanism: The vulnerability specifically involves the manipulation of log files by the VirtualBox system service (VboxSDS). The service, which runs with SYSTEM privileges, manages log files in a directory that does not have strict access controls. This allows a low privileged user to manipulate these files, potentially leading to privilege escalation. The service performs file rename/move operations recursively, and if manipulated correctly, this behavior can be abused to perform unauthorized actions.
📌 Mitigation: Users are advised to update their VirtualBox to version 7.0.16 or later, which contains the necessary patches to mitigate this vulnerability