Regedit exploit discovered

[Tarun]

Igor Franchuk has discovered a weakness in Microsoft Windows, which can be exploited to hide certain information.

The weakness is caused due to an error in the Registry Editor Utility (regedit.exe) when handling long string names. This can be exploited to hide strings in a registry key by creating a string with a long name, which causes this string and any subsequently created strings in the key to be hidden.

Successful exploitation e.g. makes it possible for malware to hide strings in the "Run" registry key. However, these hidden strings created after the string with the overly long name will still be executed when the user logs in.

The same problem reportedly also exists for overly long registry keys.

The weakness has been confirmed in fully updated Windows XP SP2 and Windows 2000 SP4 systems. Other versions may also be affected.

Solution:

It's possible to see hidden registry strings with the "reg" command line utility.

The "regedt32.exe" utility on Windows 2000 is not affected.

Ensure that systems have up-to-date anti-virus and spyware detection software installed.

Provided and/or discovered by:

Igor Franchuk

http://secunia.com/advisories/16560/

[DigeratiPrime]

wow thats a pretty big and stupid bug.

[Tarun]

wow thats a pretty big and stupid bug. 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I agree, but I wondered this:

Why do websites so stupidly publish these things? They should be directly reported to Microsoft and not put all over the Internet for script kiddies and other malicious users to exploit.

[ColdFusion200]

yep - if i was a malware writer, i do something in a matter of minutes to exploit this

they should wait for the software vendor to release a patch before announcing it