Fortunato [fox] Lodari, Raffaele Nacca, Walter Oberacher, Davide Bianchin, Luca Bernardi @ Deda Cloud Cybersecurity Team
CrowdStrike Falcon is a cloud-powered endpoint detection and response (EDR) and antivirus (AV) solution. On each end-device a kernel level managed sensor is deployed and makes use of the cloud-based capabilities. The sensor can be configured with an uninstall protection. It prevents the uninstallation of CrowdStrike Falcon sensor on the end-device without a one-time generated token.
Exploiting this vulnerability allows an attacker with administrative privileges to bypass the token check on Windows end-devices and to uninstall the sensor from the device without proper authorization, effectively removing the device's EDR and AV protection.
Vulnerable sensor version: 6.44.15806
Timeline
- 22/08/2022: After the release of CVE-2022-2841 affecting version 6.31.14505 and 6.42.15210 the Deda Cloud Cybersecurity team started ritual operation to check whether patched releases were still affected
- 25/08/2022: CVE-2022-2841 PoC can still be used for Race Condition but does not work on version 6.44.15806. With a small change of the PoC to speed up the race condition, we were able to uninstall the fixed sensor without the security token
- 25/08/2022: We sent first Powershell PoC (Falcon-6.44.15806-uninstall.ps1) to Crowdstrike support team
- 11/11/2022: We sent exploit source code (Falcon-6.44.15806-uninstall.cpp) and proofs (PoC video) to Crowdstrike support team
- 29/11/2022: Crowdstrike support team acknowledged the vulnerability of already hotfixed 6.44.15806 sensor and approved the release of the new CVE
Snip of Crowdstrike support team acknowledge e-mail
As stated in the e-mail, Crowdstrike already patched the vulnerable versions.
PoC key changes
# edit #1
Line 111: std::string cmd = "cmd /c start msiexec /x " + guid;
# edit #2
Line 67: if (g_msiexec_instance_count == 3 || g_msiexec_instance_count == 5) {Execution
- Compile Falcon-6.44.15806-uninstall.cpp with Visual Studio
- Execute as Administrator in a cmd:
.\Falcon-6.44.15806-uninstall.exe "C:\ProgramData\Package Cache\{XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX}v6.44.15806\CsAgent.msi"- Press "Yes" or "Ok" on every request prompted (be fast!)
- Enjoy
Screenshots
Name of the test machine: MOANA Policies: EXTRA AGGRESSIVE (all options enabled)
Uninstall in progress...
Uninstall completed (there are no more file inside the Crowdstrike directory) - Restart required if deamon is still active in memory and running (it will generate detections)
Moana results unreachable via Cloud
Dump of lsass.exe
Authors
Fortunato [fox] Lodari, Raffaele Nacca, Walter Oberacher, Davide Bianchin, Luca Bernardi @ Deda Cloud Cybersecurity Team