Windows 2000 Service Control Manager Named Pipe Impersonation Vulnerability Patch

From Microsoft: The Service Control Manager (services.exe) is an administrative tool provided in Windows 2000 that allows system services (Server, Workstation, Alerter, ClipBook, etc.) to be created or modified. The SCM creates a named pipe for each service as it starts, however, should a malicious program predict and create the named pipe for a specific service before the service starts, the program could impersonate the privileges of the service. This could allow the malicious program to run in the context of the given service, with either specific user or LocalSystem privileges.

The primary risk from this vulnerability is that a malicious user could exploit this vulnerability to gain additional privileges on the local machine. A malicious user would require the ability to log onto the target machine interactively and run arbitrary programs in order to exploit this vulnerability, and as a result, workstations and terminal servers would be at greatest risk.

Affected Software Versions

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server
• Microsoft Windows 2000 Advanced Server

Microsoft has released a patch that eliminates this security vulnerability.