Teaching an Old Framework New Tricks: The Dangers of Windows UI Automation | Akamai
- Akamai security researcher Tomer Peled explored new ways to use and abuse Microsoft's UI Automation framework and discovered an attack technique that evades endpoint detection and response (EDR). To exploit this technique, a user must be convinced to run a program that uses UI Automation. This can lead to stealthy command execution, which can harvest sensitive data, redirect browsers to phishing websites, and more. Detection of this technique is challenging in several ways, including for EDR. All EDR technologies we have tested against this technique were unable to find any malicious activity. This technique can be used on every Windows endpoint with operating system XP and above. In this blog post, we provide a full write-up on how to (ab)use the UI Automation framework (including possible attacks that could leverage it) and we present a proof of concept (PoC) for each abuse vector we discuss. We also provide detection and mitigation options.