The notorious North Korean state-sponsored hacker group Lazarus has begun exploiting a known vulnerability in an OEM driver developed by Dell to evade detection by security solutions. This is a prime example of why it’s important to always keep third-party PC manufacturer software, which is often neglected, up to date, as well as to add vulnerable versions to blocklists.
“The most notable tool delivered by the attackers was a user-mode module that gained the ability to read and write kernel memory due to the CVE-2021-21551 vulnerability in a legitimate Dell driver,” security researchers from antivirus firm ESET said in a recent report. “This is the first ever recorded abuse of this vulnerability in the wild. The attackers then used their kernel memory write access to disable seven mechanisms the Windows operating system offers to monitor its actions, like registry, file system, process creation, event tracing etc., basically blinding security solutions in a very generic and robust way.”
