It seems kind of weird, like on top of the technical details it is describing some still-in-progress argument with the 7zip folks about who is responsible for the bug. DHowett 58 days ago parent prev next [—]. I don't think it does. I am failing to see 1. It seems when you drop a file into the help viewer window, it is handled by the help viewer itself.
You can try it with a random file. It either displays the file inside the help viewer as an HTML file, or a Internet Explorer-like download dialog shows up. It seems that 7-zip opens the. How does this privilege escalation actually work? What does it have to with 7zip, again?
If there is a privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows Help Viever then nobody can stop anyone from writing a payload that mimicks the heap overflowing code in 7zip.
But of course that doesn't get you clicks so why not bait everyone by attaching name of a popular open source software to it. Torvalds was spot on about security researchers. What did he say about security researchers? He has commented about security researchers and industry on several times over the years, but to sum it up we can say he doesn't think of very highly of them :p. I don't understand security stuff really the computer misbehaves frequently enough when I'm not trying to do evil things to it, why would I try to make it worse?
Why does 7zip even have admin privileges to give away, in the first place? It seems to be based on some odd interaction with the help system but I can't really parse the description. I think this is a reference to a conversation with the people behind 7-zip? It seems like a weird mix of technical details and finger-pointing. Program that opens help files with the chm extension. It is possible to see vulnerabilities such as XXE or command execution in every program that uses the hh.
Seems like a pretty solid argument from the 7zip folks, right? They can't really be blamed if the Windows help system has decided to give them root for some reason. And since 7zip is partially open source, any would-be hacker could just grab an old version of the code if they wanted to weaponize this, right? But maybe there's something I'm missing.
Windows privilege escalation bugs are so unbelievably common. We just fixed one in our MSI installer, and when I went to search for the CVE there were like 10 recent ones from different things including various VPN clients and shell extension apps.
The culprit is usually the insane Windows ACL permission system. If you are depending on its local user permission access control to be anything more than advisory you are going to have a bad time. GordonS 58 days ago parent next [—]. While your last paragraph is technically true, ACLs can also be applied on files from network shares.
And of course just as on Linux , even on single, non-networked machines, only very technical users will realistically be able to access files they are not authorised for. It may be more capable but that comes at a high cost in terms of usability, bugs, and vulnerabilities. Complexity is generally bad for security especially when the system doesn't seem well designed to manage it.
Lets not pretend UNIX doesn't have enough of their own, specially with setuid exploits. Windows beats Unix variants by at least on local privilege escalation bugs. Not sure about that, but If we're talking about desktops systems, privesc is trivial in either OS.
On Windows UAC isn't even intended to be a barrier. If we're talking about servers, I'm not sure that Windows is worse on privescs. I'd say the main intention of UAC is to make sudo but without obvious vulnerabilities.
The UAC dialog is wired deep into the system and you can't fake it. It takes priority over any UI stuff and won't accept input from a program you didn't specifically authorize which requires accepting a UAC prompt. On the flipside, all it takes to manipulate sudo on Unix systems is to write a TTY emulator that just middlewares between the user and sudo.
Then just alias via bashrc or any number of other places that can prompt for a user password. There is not protection sudo can deploy against that. Polkit helps a bit but X11 isn't great at helping there either since other programs can just send keystrokes. I'm just saying that Microsoft has stated that UAC is not intended to be a privilege boundary. It is a clear privilege boundary, just not a barrier.
Crossing that divide requires a user interaction. UAC can be a barrier if it would display more about the programs intention. Similar sudo could be improved the same way. No, that's not correct. The reason it's not a barrier and not a boundary is because there are universal bypasses. Where is the statistic proving that? CVE database is pretty much alike. You're absolutely correct about the Windows ACL system. The discretionary access control system in Windows can easily be subverted by a poorly configured dynamic access control policy.
Windows is not a single-user OS. Even a standard "desktop" installation can support multiple sessions through terminal services, but usually it is not configured to allow multiple concurrent interactive sessions. Pxtl 58 days ago prev next [—]. This looks more like a bug in Windows help system than 7zip. At least it's easy to avoid, although dragging and dropping files in 7zip is an expected operation, I don't think people are opening their "help" often.
I wonder how many programs have this bug? How many programs have Windows help and involve dragging and dropping files? Kwpolska 58 days ago parent next [—]. This involves dragging-and-dropping files onto the Help window, not 7-zip proper.
This reminds me slightly of the recent Razer 0day [1] when plugging in a mouse. Seems like a big with MS help viewer more than 7z. Only on Windows, apparently. It wasn't even modified after the AES implementation was found to be somewhat lacking. No patch yet, apparently. Is it better? Super problematic that the HN mod team removed these posts by the author. The first line tells it to run the actions when the F4 is pressed.
You can change the key by editing the first line. The modifier keys are as follows:. Win Windows logo key! I suggest checking out the tutorial page. This isn't a hotkey as such but can be accomplished entirely on the keyboard and doesn't require any programs or system changes:.
Now the whole dropdown menu is accessible on every WindowsExplorer Window at the very, very top left of the window. Now whenever you need to open a WinExplorer window, you can add a Text File or other stuff with just 2 klicks. For Win10 not tested on older Operating Systems Hope this helps somebody. I use QTTabBar. Open QTTabBar options. Keyboard Shortcuts. Scroll down to Create a new txt file. Highlight and change it to F8 or any other.
In explorer press F8 and it creates "New Text Document". Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top.
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How to create a new text document TXT file by a Hotkey? Ask Question. Asked 5 years, 11 months ago. Modified 1 year, 5 months ago.
Viewed 64k times. OS: Windows Windows Explorer. No matter what the Keyboard Layout is Maybe this can help "Create new text document" option missing from context menu.
Improve this question. Community Bot 1. Stamimail Stamimail 2 2 gold badges 4 4 silver badges 8 8 bronze badges. Half of the answer might include: pin Notepad to the start menu via right click -- pin to start menu. After that, click on the new Notepad entry on top of the start menu and choose Properties. In the Shortcut tab, hit the mouse cursor into the Shortcut Key box and press your chosen hot key, e. Close the properties windows with "OK".
After that, Notepad will be started after you press ctrl-alt-n. However, if you hit File - Save as Thank you for your answer, but the question is about, how to name the txt file before you open it for editing - a Hotkey for this. You should clearly state what OS OS family and file manager you are talking about. I can guess it's Windows and its native explorer.
A tag will be useful. Another hint: fsutil file createnew emptyfile. Although not a hotkey. Add a comment. Sorted by: Reset to default. Highest score default Date modified newest first Date created oldest first.
I spoke to the researcher on twitter, his claims don't make much sense. When I told him that, he said "that file doesn't belong to me anyway" - then explained he was planning his wedding and was too busy to answer more questions.
Logically, if there was a way to escalate privileges via 7-zip, then it could also be exploited with CreateRemoteThread - why would a heap overflow be necessary? What change to 7-zip has he requested that would prevent that? Why the bizarre drag-and-dropping operation, why not just double click a HTA file? I suspect there is no heap overflow and no privilege escalation. The vulnerability in hh. My team and I Adversary Simulation at IBM X-Force Red conduct stealth-oriented red team security assessments and we use vulnerabilities like this to do our jobs every day - just as any red team worth its salt would.
Capabilities like this are built into all kinds of tools that are installed by default on Windows. They are often essential to obtaining code or command execution on hosts through social engineering or post-exploitation when moving laterally between hosts. This is just speculation, but the privesc vulnerability might be related to memory allocation in the DLL used to integrate with the system shell context menu - i. Just a guess based on the mention of a heap overflow. I think it's also probably somewhat common for run of the mill employees to use privilege escalation exploits to get admin access to do regular tasks.
At least it was common in places I've worked where your local PC was so locked down that you couldn't do your job, and the official process to work around that wasn't reasonable. Enough people doing that opens up other unintended holes. I'm pretty sure I've used this exact attack to escalate privs back when I was in high school, to work around the school's restrictions.
At work I've used dirty sock[0] to gain su on a development server. For me it was installing a local account with admin privileges via Kali Linux. You need to drag the malicious. I don't know who is at fault, but that's a pretty weird intrusion vector. A vector is a vector : Imagine someone with just user privilege to a machine needing admin access to install more pervasive RAT, this gives them a way.
Send broken archive to victim 2. Check out this cool Easter egg! Maybe it will never be published : " would hardly call this publishing. MrStonedOne 58 days ago root parent prev next [—]. Not really. They seem to be implying they got to running a command as SYSTEM from 7-zip, but, like, don't specify things like what security context 7-zip started as, or how a program running as non-admin got to a system security context, or like, how that's 7zip's fault and not the fault of the OS.
This is all very confusing. Very confusingly written document, but from what I gather there are two vulnerabilities that are problematic for different reasons. This is problematic because a downloaded 7z file could compromise your machine; 2 a privilege escalation vulnerability in the MS help viewer.
This is problematic because it could allow an unprivileged user to gain admin rights. However the post presents them as one single vulnerability? I don't get it either. From poking around in Process Explorer the help viewer window isn't its own process, it's still part of "7zFM. Don't know where the high integrity context is coming from. I wonder if it's silent elevation, in which case just putting UAC on "always ask" is good enough and what I do anyway.
The PoC video showed that the current user isn't in the "Administrator" group though there is another user "zeroday" in there , which makes it look like not a simple UAC bypass. Or perhaps I misunderstood something. Someone 58 days ago root parent prev next [—]. Given that, I think this is better removed from any system. If you have to access. Phew, I thought I was just bad at parsing this stuff. It seems kind of weird, like on top of the technical details it is describing some still-in-progress argument with the 7zip folks about who is responsible for the bug.
DHowett 58 days ago parent prev next [—]. I don't think it does. I am failing to see 1. It seems when you drop a file into the help viewer window, it is handled by the help viewer itself. You can try it with a random file.
It either displays the file inside the help viewer as an HTML file, or a Internet Explorer-like download dialog shows up. It seems that 7-zip opens the. How does this privilege escalation actually work?
What does it have to with 7zip, again? If there is a privilege escalation vulnerability in Windows Help Viever then nobody can stop anyone from writing a payload that mimicks the heap overflowing code in 7zip. But of course that doesn't get you clicks so why not bait everyone by attaching name of a popular open source software to it. Torvalds was spot on about security researchers.
What did he say about security researchers? He has commented about security researchers and industry on several times over the years, but to sum it up we can say he doesn't think of very highly of them :p. I don't understand security stuff really the computer misbehaves frequently enough when I'm not trying to do evil things to it, why would I try to make it worse?
Why does 7zip even have admin privileges to give away, in the first place? It seems to be based on some odd interaction with the help system but I can't really parse the description. I think this is a reference to a conversation with the people behind 7-zip? It seems like a weird mix of technical details and finger-pointing.
Program that opens help files with the chm extension. It is possible to see vulnerabilities such as XXE or command execution in every program that uses the hh.
Seems like a pretty solid argument from the 7zip folks, right? They can't really be blamed if the Windows help system has decided to give them root for some reason. And since 7zip is partially open source, any would-be hacker could just grab an old version of the code if they wanted to weaponize this, right?
But maybe there's something I'm missing. Windows privilege escalation bugs are so unbelievably common. We just fixed one in our MSI installer, and when I went to search for the CVE there were like 10 recent ones from different things including various VPN clients and shell extension apps.
The culprit is usually the insane Windows ACL permission system. If you are depending on its local user permission access control to be anything more than advisory you are going to have a bad time. GordonS 58 days ago parent next [—].
While your last paragraph is technically true, ACLs can also be applied on files from network shares. And of course just as on Linux , even on single, non-networked machines, only very technical users will realistically be able to access files they are not authorised for.
It may be more capable but that comes at a high cost in terms of usability, bugs, and vulnerabilities. Complexity is generally bad for security especially when the system doesn't seem well designed to manage it. Lets not pretend UNIX doesn't have enough of their own, specially with setuid exploits.
Windows beats Unix variants by at least on local privilege escalation bugs. Not sure about that, but If we're talking about desktops systems, privesc is trivial in either OS. On Windows UAC isn't even intended to be a barrier. If we're talking about servers, I'm not sure that Windows is worse on privescs.
I'd say the main intention of UAC is to make sudo but without obvious vulnerabilities. The UAC dialog is wired deep into the system and you can't fake it. It takes priority over any UI stuff and won't accept input from a program you didn't specifically authorize which requires accepting a UAC prompt. On the flipside, all it takes to manipulate sudo on Unix systems is to write a TTY emulator that just middlewares between the user and sudo.
Then just alias via bashrc or any number of other places that can prompt for a user password. There is not protection sudo can deploy against that. Polkit helps a bit but X11 isn't great at helping there either since other programs can just send keystrokes. I'm just saying that Microsoft has stated that UAC is not intended to be a privilege boundary. It is a clear privilege boundary, just not a barrier.
Crossing that divide requires a user interaction. UAC can be a barrier if it would display more about the programs intention. Similar sudo could be improved the same way. No, that's not correct. The reason it's not a barrier and not a boundary is because there are universal bypasses. Where is the statistic proving that? CVE database is pretty much alike.