September 5, 2024

Pwn2Own Automotive 2024: Hacking the Autel MaxiCharger

During Pwn2Own Automotive 2024 in Tokyo, we demonstrated exploits against three different EV chargers: the Autel MaxiCharger (MAXI US AC W12-L-4G), the ChargePoint Home Flex and the JuiceBox 40 Smart EV Charging Station with WiFi. This is our writeup of the research we performed on the Autel MaxiCharger, the bugs we found (CVE-2024-23958, CVE-2024-23959 and CVE-2024-23967) and the exploits we developed. During the competition, we were able to execute arbitrary code on this charger with no other prerequisites than being in range of Bluetooth.

September 28, 2023

Getting SYSTEM on Windows in style

Microsoft has published a patch for CVE-2023-38146 on patch Tuesday of September 2023. The advisory for this vulnerability mentions that the impact is remote code execution, which was demonstrated by @carrot_c4k3 - the researcher who first reported the vulnerability to Microsoft in May of 2023. Her ThemeBleed writeup and proof-of-concept demonstrate how an attacker might exploit the vulnerability for code execution by luring an unsuspecting victim into opening a booby-trapped .themepack file.

We had also identified and reported the same vulnerability in August of 2023. But, our proof-of-concept exploit took a slightly different path with a distinct outcome. It turns out that it is possible to exploit this vulnerability for initial access as well as privilege escalation!

April 5, 2023

Technical analysis of the Genesis Market

For the last couple of weeks we’ve assisted the Dutch police in investigating the Genesis Market. In case you are unfamiliar with this market, it was used to sell stolen login credentials, browser cookies and online fingerprints (in order to prevent ‘risky sign-in’ detections), by some referred to as IMPaas, or Impersonation-as-a-Service. The market seemed to have started in 2018 and its activities have resulted in approximately two million victims. If you want to know more about this operation, you can read our other blog post. You can also check if your data has been compromised by the market operators via the website of the Dutch police.

January 13, 2023

Bad things come in large packages: .pkg signature verification bypass on macOS

Code signing of applications is an essential element of macOS security. Besides signing applications, it is also possible to sign installer packages (.pkg files). During a short review of the xar source code, we found a vulnerability (CVE-2022-42841) that could be used to modify a signed installer package without invalidating its signature. This vulnerability could be abused to bypass Gatekeeper, SIP and under certain conditions elevate privileges to root.

October 17, 2022

Pwn2Own Miami 2022: ICONICS GENESIS64 Arbitrary Code Execution

This write-up is part 5 of a series of write-ups about the 5 vulnerabilities we demonstrated last April at Pwn2Own Miami. This is the write-up for an Arbitrary Code Execution vulnerability in ICONICS GENESIS64 (CVE-2022-33315).

We successfully demonstrated this vulnerability during the competition, however it turned out that the vendor was already aware of this vulnerability. As this was also one of the most shallow bugs we used during the competition, this was something we already anticipated. The bug was originally reported by Zymo Security and disclosed as https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/advisories/ZDI-22-1043/. Luckily, this was the only bug collision we had during this competition.

September 8, 2022

Pwn2Own Miami 2022: AVEVA Edge Arbitrary Code Execution

This write-up is part 3 of a series of write-ups about the 5 vulnerabilities we demonstrated last April at Pwn2Own Miami. This is the write-up for an Arbitrary Code Execution vulnerability in AVEVA Edge (CVE-2022-28688).

AVEVA Edge can be used to design Human Machine Interfaces (HMI). It allows for the designing of GUI applications, which can be programmed using a scripting language. The screenshot below shows one of the demo projects that come with the installer:

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