Friday, August 14, 2009

Clipboard Attacks

I was thinking today while I was using Remote Desktop to monitor one of the servers at work about how the clipboard is such a universally-accessible piece of the Windows operating system. To the extent of my knowledge, there is no real restriction on a program using or accessing it. A typical user will use the clipboard many many times a day, often copying important information and pasting it elsewhere.

Would it be feasible for a piece of malware to only monitor the clipboard and store all new text in a file? If so, the malware would stay relatively low profile and not draw any undue attention to itself. It would capture anything copied throughout the user's session. It would also capture anything copied in a remote desktop connection, since all things copied in remote desktop are also available to be pasted in the user's actual desktop (and visa versa). I am sure there are hundreds of other interesting situations where one could take advantage of the universality of the clipboard.

One interesting example of clipboard usage, although not related to capturing copied information, is related to RSnake's post about De-cloaking in IE7.0 using windows variables. All it would take for this to actually work is for a user to be sent an email with a link in it that doesn't go anywhere. Under the link, some text could say "Link not working? Copy and paste this into your address bar..." and boom! variable expansion and the accessed server has logged whatever expanded windows variables were contained in the copied url.

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