Exploit code loose for six-month-old Windows bug

Microsoft Thursday acknowledged that exploit code is circulating for a vulnerability it acknowledged six months ago, but has yet to patch.

It's not clear whether Microsoft intends to fix the flaw next week.

On Thursday, Microsoft revised a security advisory it first posted April 19 about a bug in Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and Server 2008 that could be exploited to gain additional privileges on vulnerable machines. "Exploit code has been published on the Internet for the vulnerability addressed by this advisory," confirmed Bill Sisk, a communications manager at Microsoft's Security Response Center in a post to the MSRC blog.

The vulnerability has a convoluted history.

In late March, Argentinean security researcher Cesar Cerrudo announced he had found a bug that could let attackers bypass some of the security schemes in the newest versions of the operating system, including Windows Server 2008. At the time, Sick called Cerrudo's bug a "design flaw" rather than a vulnerability, and downplayed the threat.

Only after Cerrudo presented his findings at a security conference in April in the United Arab Emirates did Microsoft change its tune and call the flaw a security problem.

On Wednesday, Cerrudo posted a proof-of-concept (PoC) exploit for the months-old vulnerability. "It has been a long time since [my April] presentation was published so I decided to release a PoC exploit for Windows Server 2003 that allows [you] to execute code under [a] SYSTEM account," Cerrudo said in the description of his exploit on milw0rm.com.

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