The attackers behind the recent Stuxnet worm attack used four different zero-day security vulnerabilities to burrow into — and spread around — Microsoft’s Windows operating system, according to a startling disclosure from the world’s largest software maker.
Two of the four vulnerabilities are still unpatched.
As new details emerge to shine a brighter light on the Stuxnet attack, Microsoft said the attackers initially targeted the old MS08-067 vulnerability (used in the Conficker attack), a new LNK (Windows Shortcut) flaw to launch exploit code on vulnerable Windows systems and a zero-day bug in the Print Spooler Service that makes it possible for malicious code to be passed to, and then executed on, a remote machine.
The malware also exploited two different elevation of privilege holes to gain complete control over the affected system. These two flaws are still unpatched.
Kaspersky Lab discovered two of the three new zero-days and worked closely with Microsoft during the research and patch-creation process.