Internet Explorer Hacked in 2 minutes on Windows 7

Peter Vreugdenhil of the Netherlands and a German researcher, who only would give his first name of Nils, found ways to disable DEP (data execution prevention) and ASLR (address space layout randomisation), two of Windows 7′s most shouted anti-exploit features. The test was performed on 64 bit windows 7 which was fully updated to include the latest patch.

Vreugdenhil used a two-exploit combination to circumvent first ASLR, then DEP, to successfully hack IE8. A half hour later, Nils bypassed the same defensive mechanisms to exploit Mozilla’s Firefox 3.6. For their efforts, each was awarded the notebook they attacked, $10,000 in cash and a paid trip to the DefCon hackers conference in Las Vegas this July.

“Every exploit today has been top-notch,” said Aaron Portnoy, security research team lead with 3Com TippingPoint, the contest sponsor, and the organizer of Pwn2Own, in an interview at the end of the day on Wednesday.

“The one on IE8 was particularly impressive.” Vreugdenhil used a heap overflow vulnerability that allowed him to obtain the base address of a .dll module IE8 loads into memory. He then used that to run his DEP-skirting exploit.

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