Advisory Details

January 10th, 2019

Microsoft Visual Studio wpa Protocol XML External Entity Processing Information Disclosure Vulnerability

ZDI-19-016
ZDI-CAN-7251

CVE ID
CVSS SCORE 4.3, AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:R/S:U/C:L/I:N/A:N
AFFECTED VENDORS Microsoft
AFFECTED PRODUCTS Visual Studio
VULNERABILITY DETAILS

This vulnerability allows remote attackers to disclose sensitive information on vulnerable installations of Microsoft Visual Studio. User interaction is required to exploit this vulnerability in that the target must visit a malicious page or open a malicious file.

The specific flaw exists within the handler for the Windows Performance Analyzer (wpa) protocol. Due to the improper restriction of XML External Entity (XXE) references, a specially crafted document specifying a URI causes the XML parser to access the URI and embed the contents back into the XML document for further processing. An attacker can leverage this vulnerability to disclose information in the context of the current user.

ADDITIONAL DETAILS Microsoft has issued an update to correct this vulnerability. More details can be found at:
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/windows-10-sdk
DISCLOSURE TIMELINE
  • 2018-09-20 - Vulnerability reported to vendor
  • 2019-01-10 - Coordinated public release of advisory
CREDIT rgod of 9sg Security Team - rgod@9sgsec.com
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