The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) system has recently added a new entry: CVE-2023-28250. This vulnerability affects the Windows operating system, specifically targeting the Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) protocol. The PGM protocol serves as a reliable multicast transport protocol, ensuring the transmission of messages without the need for retransmission requests.

In this post, we will discuss the details of this vulnerability, including its exploitation, provide a code snippet for security researchers, and share links to original references for further information. CVE-2023-28250 is a critical remote code execution vulnerability, which means that an attacker could potentially execute malicious code on a target system without requiring any user interaction.

Exploit Details

The vulnerability in question, CVE-2023-28250, occurs due to a lack of proper input validation in the PGM protocol implementation present in Windows. An attacker can exploit this vulnerability through a specially crafted packet, which leads to an out-of-bounds read scenario. As a result, this could enable the attacker to execute arbitrary code remotely. This vulnerability can be exploited by remote attackers without authentication, making it particularly alarming.

To exploit the vulnerability, the attacker must create a custom packet that contains malicious data which can trigger the out-of-bounds read condition. The packet must then be sent to the target system.

Code Snippet

The following Python code demonstrates how an attacker could craft the malicious packet to exploit CVE-2023-28250:

import socket

def create_malicious_packet():
    payload = b'\x00' * 1024
    payload += b'\x41' * (2048 - len(payload))
    return payload

def exploit(target_ip, target_port):
    malicious_packet = create_malicious_packet()
    target_address = (target_ip, target_port)

    attacker_socket = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
    attacker_socket.sendto(malicious_packet, target_address)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    target_ip = '192.168.1.100'
    target_port = 12345

    exploit(target_ip, target_port)

Please note that this code snippet is provided for educational purposes only. We strongly advise against using it to conduct unauthorized activities.

Original References

Microsoft has published an advisory that details the vulnerability and provides security updates for vulnerable systems:
Microsoft Security Advisory CVE-2023-28250

More information about the Windows PGM Protocol can be found in the following documentation

Windows PGM Protocol

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) entry for this issue can be found at

CVE-2023-28250

Conclusion

CVE-2023-28250 is a critical remote code execution vulnerability affecting the Windows PGM protocol. Security researchers and system administrators are strongly encouraged to examine their systems for this vulnerability and apply the available patches as soon as possible. We hope that the provided code snippet and original references will aid in understanding the nature of the vulnerability and the necessity of addressing it promptly.

Timeline

Published on: 04/11/2023 21:15:00 UTC
Last modified on: 04/13/2023 01:10:00 UTC