August 5, 2024 at 09:18AM
Cybersecurity researchers have identified design weaknesses in Microsoft’s Windows Smart App Control and SmartScreen, potentially allowing threat actors to gain access without triggering warnings. These vulnerabilities include bypassing protections with a legitimate EV certificate, reputation hijacking, seeding, tampering, and LNK stomping. This underscores the need for additional scrutiny in download detection.
The meeting notes focus on the vulnerabilities found in Microsoft’s Smart App Control and SmartScreen security features, which could allow threat actors to gain access to target environments without triggering any warnings. The weaknesses can be exploited through methods such as reputation hijacking, reputation seeding, reputation tampering, and LNK stomping. Cybersecurity researchers stress the importance of not solely relying on OS-native security features and encourage security teams to scrutinize downloads carefully in their detection stack.