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Windows Escalate UAC Protection Bypass (Via SilentCleanup)

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Windows Escalate UAC Protection Bypass (Via SilentCleanup)

Disclosed
02/24/2019
Created
06/27/2019

Description

There's a task in Windows Task Scheduler called "SilentCleanup" which, while it's executed as Users, automatically runs with elevated privileges. When it runs, it executes the file %windir%\system32\cleanmgr.exe. Since it runs as Users, and we can control user's environment variables, %windir% (normally pointing to C:\Windows) can be changed to point to whatever we want, and it'll run as admin.

Author(s)

  • tyranid
  • enigma0x3
  • nyshone69
  • lokiuox
  • Carter Brainerd (cbrnrd)

Platform

Windows

Architectures

x86, x64

Development

Module Options

To display the available options, load the module within the Metasploit console and run the commands 'show options' or 'show advanced':

msf > use exploit/windows/local/bypassuac_silentcleanup
msf exploit(bypassuac_silentcleanup) > show targets
    ...targets...
msf exploit(bypassuac_silentcleanup) > set TARGET < target-id >
msf exploit(bypassuac_silentcleanup) > show options
    ...show and set options...
msf exploit(bypassuac_silentcleanup) > exploit

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