Skip to content

LegacyHive: Windows user profile service arbitrary hive load elevation of priv

github.com/MSNightmare
3 pointsmarak8301 comment
On HN

Comments

NightCrawler released another window's vuln.

From what I can understand of it:

* Read the target user's NTUSER.DAT hive into memory as a backup.

* Open the hive offline using the Offline Registry (offreg) API.

* Modify HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\User Shell Folders\Local AppData to point at \\.\GlobalRoot\BaseNamedObjects\Restricted.

* Save the modified hive and replace the original NTUSER.DAT.

* Copy the user's UsrClass.dat into the temporary working directory.

* Acquire a batch oplock on the copied UsrClass.dat to synchronize execution with profile loading.

* Start a suspended process using CreateProcessWithLogonW(..., LOGON_WITH_PROFILE, ...), triggering the User Profile Service to load the profile.

* Wait for the oplock to break when Windows attempts to access UsrClass.dat

https://blog.projectnightcrawler.dev/posts/2026-07-14-legacy...

update: formatting :s

AboutSource Built by g1lg1l

Hackerly is an independent reader for Hacker News, built on the public HN API. Not affiliated with Y Combinator.