The process of automating repetitive tasks at work has become less complicated in recent years.
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You can use automation tools with drag-and-drop interfaces to accomplish things like keeping track of your work hours in a spreadsheet or adding items to your to-do list whenever someone emails you.
While these tools may make your life easier, they also come with potential downsides. One security analyst has uncovered a way to exploit a vulnerability in Microsoft’s software automation tool in order to steal information from computers or spread ransomware to those that are connected to it.
Michael Bargury, co-founder and chief technology officer of security firm Zenity, said the attack makes use of the automation device as it was intended, but rather than sending legitimate actions, it may be used to install malware.
According to Bargury’s findings, “this infrastructure can be used to perform exactly what it is meant to do” by an attacker. You “then utilize it to execute your own payloads instead of the enterprise payloads,” as the saying goes. The study’s findings were documented at last month’s DefCon hacking event, and the software was released this week.
Microsoft’s Power Automate, an automation tool built into Windows 11, is the basis for the attack. Power Automate employs robotic process automation (RPA), in which a computer simulates human behavior to complete tasks.
You may program an RPA workflow to alert you each time an RSS feed is updated. Microsoft’s software can connect Outlook, Teams, Dropbox, and other apps, and there are many of this automation available.
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The software is a component of the low-code/no-code movement, which seeks to equip the general public with means of production independent of programming expertise.
When it comes to access to information, “every business user now has the power that the developer used to have,” according to Bargury. To ensure the security of low-code and no-code applications, he founded a company.
The starting point for Bargury’s study is when a hacker has already breached a system, either through phishing or an insider threat.
While internal corporate computer systems are perpetually unsafe (due to a lack of patching and updates, for example), an attacker starting at this level would have already gained access to a company’s network.
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After gaining access to a system, an attacker needs to take a few extra steps to exploit the RPA configuration, although they are straightforward. Bargury, who has nicknamed the entire course Power Pwn and is documenting it on GitHub, said, “There’s not a lot of hacking here.”
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For starters, a hacker needs to create a tenant in Microsoft’s cloud and give it administrative privileges over any devices that might be given to it.
Most importantly, this opens the door for the rogue account to initiate Remote Process Automation (RPA) on the victim’s machine. Hackers can simply assign the hacked machine to the new admin account using a straightforward command line technique known as silent registration.
After that, “you’ll obtain a URL that would allow you, as an attacker, to transmit payloads to the system,” as Bargury puts it.
In preparation for his DefCon presentation, he developed many demonstrations showing how Power Automate may be used to distribute ransomware to compromised computers. A machine’s authentication tokens can be stolen in other demonstrations.
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In other words, with this trusted tunnel, “you can exfiltrate data outside of the corporate networks, install keyloggers, steal information from the clipboard, and control the browser,” as Bargury puts it.
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