A patched Windows attack surface is still exploitable

On August 8, 2023, Microsoft finally released a kernel patch for a class of vulnerabilities affecting Microsoft Windows since 2015. The vulnerabilities lead to elevation of privilege (EoP), which allows an account with user rights to gain SYSTEM privileges on a vulnerable host. The root cause of this attack surface, according to a 2015 blog, is the ability of a normal user account to replace the original C:\ drive with a fake one by placing a symlink for the …

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