Many antivirus products include emulation capabilities that are intended to allow unpackers to run for a few cycles before signatures are applied. ESET NOD32 uses a minifilter or kext to intercept all disk I/O, which is analyzed and then emulated if executable code is detected.
Attackers can cause I/O via Web Browsers, Email, IM, file sharing, network storage, USB, or hundreds of other vectors. Whenever a message, file, image or other data is received, it’s likely some untrusted data passes through the disk. Because it’s so easy for attackers to trigger emulation of untrusted code, it’s critically important that the emulator is robust and isolated.
Unfortunately, analysis of ESET emulation reveals that is not the case and it can be trivially compromised. This report discusses the development of a remote root exploit for an ESET vulnerability and demonstrates how attackers could compromise ESET users.
