> pipes only accept input from MSI signed software
This does not inspire confidence. I'm assuming the pipe exists so that some GUI process running as the current user can perform privileged actions since the other end of the pipe runs as SYSTEM. At this point, just inject a thread into that GUI process and send the command - the service will think it is coming from MSI software, because it is.
The "only invoke MSI signed executables" mitigation is a good one, but if these two things are all they have done, while leaving the "arbitrary registry write" primitive in, then this is still 100% vulnerable to local privilege escalation.
> At this point, just inject a thread into that GUI process and send the command
Can you or someone else expand on that?
I don’t think “only invoke MSI signed executables” inspires confidence either. There’s ought to be an MSI signed executable that launches arbitrary executables by design and defeats the mitigation.
The author got around a similar mitigation in their exploit for ASUS DriverHub (linked in the original article).