Blogs

In April 2024, I discovered a high-severity vulnerability in Visual Studio Code (VS Code <= 1.89.1) that allows attackers to escalate a Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) bug into full Remote Code Execution (RCE)—even in Restricted Mode. The desktop version of Visual Studio Code runs on Electron. Renderer processes are sandboxed and communicate with the main process through Electron’s IPC mechanism. An XSS vulnerability in the newly-introduced minimal error rendering mode for Jupyter notebooks enables arbitrary JavaScript code to be executed within the vscode-app WebView for the notebook renderer....

Introduction Many vulnerability writeups nowadays focus on the exploitation process when it comes to software bugs. The term “Exploit Developer” is also still used synonymously with Vulnerability Research, presumably coming from the early 2000s where bugs were easily discoverable and the community was just beginning to explore the art of exploitation. However nowadays with SDL and continuous fuzzing, the discovery of unknown vulnerabilities in crucial systems is getting more important, arguably more than the exploitation process....

STAR Labs Windows Exploitation Challenge Writeup Over the past few months, the STAR Labs team has been hosting a Windows exploitation challenge. I was lucky enough to solve it and got myself a ticket to Off-By-One conference. Here is my writeup for the challenge! Analyzing the binary We are given a Windows kernel driver. Basic analysis shows that it is used to receive and save messages sent from usermode. Important structures There are two key structures used in this driver: handle and message entry....

Imagine downloading a game from a third-party app store. You grant it seemingly innocuous permissions, but hidden within the app is a malicious exploit that allows attackers to steal your photos, eavesdrop on your conversations, or even take complete control of your device. This is the kind of threat posed by vulnerabilities like CVE-2022-22706 and CVE-2021-39793, which we’ll be dissecting in this post. These vulnerabilities affect Mali GPUs, commonly found in many Android devices, and allow unprivileged apps to gain root access....

Executive Summary CVE-2024-26230 is a critical vulnerability found in the Windows Telephony Service (TapiSrv), which can lead to an elevation of privilege on affected systems. The exploit leverages a use-after-free in FreeDialogInstance. By manipulating the registry, an attacker controls memory allocation to create a fake object, triggering the UAF in TUISPIDLLCallback to gain code execution. This is further chained with techniques to bypass mitigations like CFG and ultimately load a malicious DLL, escalating privileges to SYSTEM via PrintSpoofer....

🎉🎊 Cheers to 7 Amazing Years! 🎊🎉 On 8th January 2018, STAR Labs SG Pte. Ltd. was born with a simple but bold idea: to do fun offensive research that protects customers. Seven years later, that spark of curiosity and innovation has grown into something extraordinary. 🚀 Our Humble Beginnings 🛠️ It all started when STAR Labs had a small, passionate group of researchers: Shi Ji, Wei Lei, Phạm Hồng Phi, Phan Thanh Duy, and Tạ Đình Sung....

Think you’ve got what it takes to pop shells and snag your ticket to… RE//verse and Off-By-One? 😏 🔥 Windows Exploitation Challenge 🔥 Get SYSTEM privileges by exploiting a bug in the downloadable driver below. (pwn it!) Keep the OS alive and happy — no BSODs, no excuses! Your exploit must work on Windows 11 24H2. Submit your winning solutions(exploit source code and writeup) to [email protected]. If you think you’ve figured out the bug but can’t exploit it in time, feel free to send us a writeup too describing how you would exploit it!...