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posted by on Monday March 20 2017, @11:44PM   Printer-friendly
from the no-one-is-safe dept.

Contestants at this year's Pwn2Own hacking competition in Vancouver just pulled off an unusually impressive feat: they compromised Microsoft's heavily fortified Edge browser in a way that escapes a VMware Workstation virtual machine it runs in. The hack fetched a prize of $105,000, the highest awarded so far over the past three days.

[...] "We used a JavaScript engine bug within Microsoft Edge to achieve the code execution inside the Edge sandbox, and we used a Windows 10 kernel bug to escape from it and fully compromise the guest machine," Qihoo 360 Executive Director Zheng Zheng wrote in an e-mail. "Then we exploited a hardware simulation bug within VMware to escape from the guest operating system to the host one. All started from and only by a controlled a website."

[...] Any hack that can break out of a widely used virtual machine is generally considered significant. The one described Friday is made all the more impressive because it works by exploiting Edge, which is regarded among security professionals as one of most challenging browsers to exploit. Typically, such remote-code exploits require two or more vulnerabilities to be exploited in unison. The requirement appears to be why the Qihoo team combined the heap overflow exploit with the Windows kernel hack. The description sets up a scenario in which malicious websites can not only compromise a visitor's virtual machine, but also the much more valuable host machine the VM runs on. At last year's Pwn2Own, contestants didn't attempt to target VMWare, an indication reliable exploits were probably worth more than the $75,000 prize that was offered at the time.

Friday's success underscores the central theme of Pwn2Own, that no operating system or application is immune to hacks that thoroughly compromise its security.

Source: ArsTechnica


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:07AM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:07AM (#481872)

    Didn't even read the first sentence before commenting.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:11AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:11AM (#481877)

    Why? You're right. Windows leaks more than a door.

    • (Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:32AM (3 children)

      by bob_super (1357) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:32AM (#481888)

      That is major progress, considering how it used to leak like a colander.

      • (Score: 2) by mendax on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:35AM (2 children)

        by mendax (2840) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @12:35AM (#481890)

        Leaking like a colander means they must have been under the influence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and his great noodly appendages. :-)

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        • (Score: 1) by anubi on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:08AM (1 child)

          by anubi (2828) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @07:08AM (#481994) Journal

          They were and still are....

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          "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:40PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 21 2017, @01:40PM (#482108)

            That's about as funny as a screen door on a battleship. Sad!

  • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:56PM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Tuesday March 21 2017, @05:56PM (#482273) Homepage Journal

    Didn't even read the first sentence before commenting.

    That's just part of our culture, here! :D

    And truthfully it sometimes does make for some useful comments.

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