A security flaw in the way Microsoft Windows guards users against malicious files was actively exploited in malware attacks for two years before last week, when Microsoft finally issued a software update to correct the problem.
One of the 120 security holes Microsoft fixed on Aug. 11’s Patch Tuesday was CVE-2020-1464, a problem with the way every supported version of Windows validates digital signatures for computer programs.
Code signing is the method of using a certificate-based digital signature to sign executable files and scripts in order to verify the author’s identity and ensure that the code has not been changed or corrupted since it was signed by the author.
Microsoft said an attacker could use this “spoofing vulnerability” to bypass security features intended to prevent improperly signed files from being loaded. Microsoft’s advisory makes no mention of security researchers having told the company about the flaw, which Microsoft acknowledged was actively being exploited.
In fact, CVE-2020-1464 was first spotted in attacks used in the wild back in August 2018. And several researchers informed Microsoft about the weakness over the past 18 months.
Bernardo Quintero is the manager at VirusTotal, a service owned by Google that scans any submitted files against dozens of antivirus services and displays the results. On Jan. 15, 2019, Quintero published a blog post outlini ..
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