BlueKeep

First reported in May 2019, it is present in all unpatched Windows NT-based versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 2000 through Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7. Microsoft issued a security patch (including an out-of-band update for several versions of Windows that have reached their end-of-life, such as Windows XP) on 14 May 2019. On 13 August 2019, related BlueKeep security vulnerabilities, collectively named DejaBlue, were reported to affect newer Windows versions, including Windows 7 and all recent versions up to Windows 10 of the operating system, as well as the older Windows versions. On 6 September 2019, a Metasploit exploit of the wormable BlueKeep security vulnerability was announced to have been released into the public realm.

History

The BlueKeep security vulnerability was first noted by the UK National Cyber Security Centre and, on 14 May 2019, reported by Microsoft. The vulnerability was named BlueKeep by computer security expert Kevin Beaumont on Twitter. BlueKeep is officially tracked as: CVE-2019-0708 and is a "wormable" remote code execution vulnerability.

Both the U.S. National Security Agency (which issued its own advisory on the vulnerability on 4 June 2019) and Microsoft stated that this vulnerability could potentially be used by self-propagating worms, with Microsoft (based on a security researcher's estimation that nearly 1 million devices were vulnerable) saying that such a theoretical attack could be of a similar scale to EternalBlue-based attacks such as NotPetya and WannaCry.

On the same day as the NSA advisory, researchers of the CERT Coordination Center disclosed a separate RDP-related security issue in the Windows 10 May 2019 Update and Windows Server 2019, citing a new behaviour where RDP Network Level Authentication (NLA) login credentials are cached on the client system, and the user can re-gain access to their RDP connection automatically if their network connection is interrupted. Microsoft dismissed this vulnerability as being intended behaviour, and it can be disabled via Group Policy.

As of 1 June 2019, no active malware of the vulnerability seemed to be publicly known; however, undisclosed proof of concept (PoC) codes exploiting the vulnerability may have been available. On 1 July 2019, Sophos, a British security company, reported on a working example of such a PoC, in order to emphasize the urgent need to patch the vulnerability. On 22 July 2019, more details of an exploit were purportedly revealed by a conference speaker from a Chinese security firm. On 25 July 2019, computer experts reported that a commercial version of the exploit may have been available. On 31 July 2019, computer experts reported a significant increase in malicious RDP activity and warned, based on histories of exploits from similar vulnerabilities, that an active exploit of the BlueKeep vulnerability in the wild might be imminent.

On 13 August 2019, related BlueKeep security vulnerabilities, collectively named DejaBlue, were reported to affect newer Windows versions, including Windows 7 and all recent versions of the operating system up to Windows 10, as well as the older Windows versions.

On 6 September 2019, an exploit of the wormable BlueKeep security vulnerability was announced to have been released into the public realm. The initial version of this exploit was, however, unreliable, being known to cause "blue screen of death" (BSOD) errors. A fix was later announced, removing the cause of the BSOD error.

On 2 November 2019, the first BlueKeep hacking campaign on a mass scale was reported, and included an unsuccessful cryptojacking mission.

On 8 November 2019, Microsoft confirmed a BlueKeep attack, and urged users to immediately patch their Windows systems.