Millions of Windows Dell PCs need patching: Give-me-admin security gremlin found lurking in bundled support tool
Dell’s troubleshooting software SupportAssist, bundled with the US tech titan’s home and business computers, has a security flaw that can be exploited by malware and rogue logged-in users to gain administrative powers.
The Texan system slinger today issued an advisory warning that its remote support tool suffers a privilege-escalation vulnerability, CVE-2019-12280, and needs patching. We’re told Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs version 2.0.1 and Dell SupportAssist for Home PCs version 3.2.2 are the builds you need to fetch and install to kill off this high-severity hole.
The IT giant includes the Windows-based troubleshooting tool with new desktops, notebooks, and tablets. Unfortunately, as eggheads at SafeBreach Labs discovered and privately reported, the software insecurely loads .dll files when run. Researcher Peleg Hadar told The Register SupportAssist, which runs with system-level privileges, will automatically pull in unsigned code libraries from user-controlled folders. That means malware or dodgy users can leave their own .dll files in a path, wait for SupportAssist to blindly load them, and execute code with admin access.
That would allow the software nasty, or rogue insider, to gain complete control over the box. It also means, say, browser exploits that drop files on the file system can quickly lead to a remote admin-level compromise. This vulnerability is present on an an estimated 100 million Dell PCs.
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“We can assume that all Dell PCs that run the Windows operating system without changes from the manufacturer are vulnerable, as long as the user didn’t update,” said Hadar.
The most concerning part of this story is that Hadar believes Dell is not alone in shipping PCs with this type of bug.
The reason for this is Dell doesn’t actually make SupportAssist. The software itself is written and maintained by PC Doctor, a support and diagnostics software specialist that sells its code to PC makers that then rebrand the tools and bundle them into their own computer products.
“Once we found and reported it to Dell, they reported it to PC Doctor,” explained Hadar. “They said there are several OEMs that are affected by this.”
Indeed, Dell’s brief advisory, which contains instructions on how to patch, noted: “Dell SupportAssist for Business PCs and Dell SupportAssist for Home PCs require an update to the latest versions to address a security vulnerability within the PC Doctor component.”
Unfortunately, SafeBreach did not hear from PC Doctor to confirm the extent of the fallout of this programming blunder, and El Reg was unable to get in touch with the developer by the time of publication. Should the vulnerability€ prove to have been distributed to other vendors, it is likely we will see several big names in the PC space have to issue similar updates to Dell, and PC Doctor will have some explaining to do both to its partners and the general public. ®
Article source: http://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.co.uk/2019/06/20/dell_supportassist_security_hole/