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Schneider Electric Pelco VideoXpert Privilege Escalations

Medium
Advisory ID
ZSL-2017-5418
Release Date
10 July 2017
Vendor
Schneider Electric SE - https://www.pelco.com
Affected Version
Core Software 1.12.105, Media Gateway Software 1.12.26, Exports 1.12
Tested On
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional SP1 (EN)
Summary

VideoXpert is a video management solution designed for scalability, fitting the needs surveillance operations of any size. VideoXpert Ultimate can also aggregate other VideoXpert systems, tying multiple video management systems into a single interface.

Description

The application is vulnerable to an elevation of privileges vulnerability which can be used by a simple user that can change the executable file with a binary of choice. The vulnerability exist due to the improper permissions, with the 'F' flag (full) for the 'Users' group, for several binary files. The service is installed by default to start on system boot with LocalSystem privileges. Attackers can replace the binary with their rootkit, and on reboot they get SYSTEM privileges.

VideoXpert services also suffer from an unquoted search path issue impacting the 'VideoXpert Core' and 'VideoXpert Exports' services for Windows deployed as part of the VideoXpert Setup bundle. This could potentially allow an authorized but non-privileged local user to execute arbitrary code with elevated privileges on the system. A successful attempt would require the local user to be able to insert their code in the system root path undetected by the OS or other security applications where it could potentially be executed during application startup or reboot. If successful, the local user’s code would execute with the elevated privileges of the application.

Proof of Concept
Disclosure Timeline
05.04.2017Vulnerabilities discovered.
28.04.2017Vendor contacted.
09.07.2017No response from the vendor.
10.07.2017Public security advisory released.
05.12.2017Vendor releases version 2.1 to address this issue.
Credits
Vulnerability discovered by Gjoko Krstic
References
Changelog
10.07.2017Initial release
01.08.2017Added reference [1], [2] and [3]
07.08.2017Added reference [4]
05.12.2017Added vendor status
13.12.2017Added reference [5], [6], [7] and [8]
13.01.2018Added reference [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14] and [15]