Every Version of Windows Is Affected By This Vulnerability – What You Can Do About It.




What would you say if we told you that your version of Windows is affected by a vulnerability that dates back to 1997? You’d laugh, right? Surely, after all, Microsoft would have patched the fault prior to releasing Windows 98, or at the latest, Windows 2000?
Well, not quite.
This Redirect to SMB vulnerability has its roots in the identically-named attack discovered by Aaron Spangler 18 years ago. And it’s a problem that you need to do something about, because it doesn’t only affect Windows, but also programs from Adobe, Apple, Symantec and even the Windows 10 preview.

Redirect to SMB: What Does it Do?

Affecting Windows PCs, tablets and servers, Redirect to SMB – discovered by Cylance’s Brian Wallace – is a development of the original vulnerability.
In 1997, Spangler found that introducing URLS beginning “file” would cause Windows to attempt authentication with an SMB server at the given IP address (for example, file://1.1.1.1), which could then be used to record login credentials. These URLs could be introduced as images, iframes, or any other media displayed by the browser.
muo-security-smb-password-theft

SMB is the Server Message Block protocol, mostly used for sharing files, printers, and serial ports on a network. Various versions have been released over the years, (Samba is an open source implementation, although there is no suggestion that the vulnerability exists there) and it has long been a target, with real-time scanning demonstrating that SMB is one of the most popular attack vectors for online intruders. It was reported in December that the Sony Pictures hack was performed using an SMB vulnerability.
Redirect to SMB was uncovered by the Cylance team as they investigated ways to abuse a chat client.

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