This blog is based on a session we presented at DEF CON 2023 on Sunday, August 13, 2023, in Las Vegas. Privilege escalation is a common attack vector in the Windows OS. There are multiple offensive tools in the wild that can execute code as “NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM” (Meterpreter, CobaltStrike, Potato tools), and they all usually do so by duplicating tokens and manipulating services. This allows them to perform attacks like LSASS Shtinkering.
App Management is a new macOS security feature in Ventura introduced at WWDC last year:
If an app is modified by something that isn't signed by the same development team and isn't allowed by an NSUpdateSecurityPolicy, macOS will block the modification and notify the user that an app wants to manage other apps. Clicking on the notification sends people to System Settings, where they can allow an app to update and modify other apps.
Cybersecurity researchers have documented a novel post-exploit persistence technique on iOS 16 that could be abused to fly under the radar and maintain access to an Apple device even when the victim believes it is offline.
The method "tricks the victim into thinking their device's Airplane Mode works when in reality the attacker (following successful device exploit) has planted an artificial Airplane Mode which edits the UI to display Airplane Mode icon and cuts internet connection to all apps except the attacker application," Jamf Threat Labs researchers Hu Ke and Nir Avraham said in a report shared with The Hacker News.
Fox-IT (part of NCC Group) has uncovered a large-scale exploitation campaign of Citrix NetScalers in a joint effort with the Dutch Institute of Vulnerability Disclosure (DIVD). An adversary appears to have exploited CVE-2023-3519 in an automated fashion, placing webshells on vulnerable NetScalers to gain persistent access. The adversary can execute arbitrary commands with this webshell, even when a NetScaler is patched and/or rebooted. At the time of writing, more than 1900 NetScalers remain backdoored. Using the data supplied by Fox-IT, the Dutch Institute of Vulnerability Disclosure has notified victims.