New Windows 10 vulnerability allows anyone to get admin privileges

Windows 10 and Windows 11 are vulnerable to a local elevation of privilege vulnerability after discovering that users with low privileges can access sensitive Registry database files.

The Windows Registry acts as the configuration repository for the Windows operating system and contains hashed passwords, user customizations, configuration options for applications, system decryption keys, and more.

The database files associated with the Windows Registry are stored under the C:\Windows\system32\config folder and are broken up into different files such as SYSTEM, SECURITY, SAM, DEFAULT, and SOFTWARE.

As these files contain sensitive information about all user accounts on a device and security tokens used by Windows features, they should be restricted from being viewed by regular users with no elevated privileges.

This is especially true for the Security Account Manager (SAM) file as it contains the hashed passwords for all users on a system, which threat actors can use to assume their identity.

SAM file can be read by anyone

Yesterday, security researcher Jonas Lykkegaard told BleepingComputer he discovered that the Windows 10 and Windows 11 Registry files associated with the Security Account Manager (SAM), and all other Registry databases, are accessible to the ‘Users’ group that has low privileges on a device.

These low permissions were confirmed by BleepingComputer on a fully patched Windows 10 20H2 device, as shown below.

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