Beginner's error: import function of Windows Mail executes rogue program C:\Program.exe with credentials of other account

Hi @ll,

the import function of Windows Mail executes a rogue program C:\Program.exe
with the credentials of another account, resulting in a privilege escalation!

1. Fetch <http://home.arcor.de/skanthak/download/SENTINEL.EXE&gt; and save it as
   C:\Program.exe

2. Start Windows Mail (part of Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008)

3. On the File menu, click Identities

4. On the entry page of the wizard click [ Continue > ]

5. Select "(*) Import identities of other Windows account" and click [ Continue > ]

6. Enter account name and password of any Windows account

7. See the message from C:\Program.exe when Windows Mail runs the UNQUOTED
   command line C:\Program Files\Windows Mail\WinMail.Exe /identcatalog

From <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/cc144175.aspx&gt;
or <http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/cc144101.aspx&gt;:

| Note: If any element of the command string contains or might contain
| spaces, it must be enclosed in quotation marks. Otherwise, if the
| element contains a space, it will not parse correctly. For instance,
| "My Program.exe" starts the application properly. If you use
| My Program.exe without quotation marks, then the system attempts to
| launch My with Program.exe as its first command line argument.

From <http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/ms682425.aspx&gt;:

| Security Remarks
|
| The lpApplicationName parameter can be NULL, and the executable name
| must be the first white space-delimited string in lpCommandLine.
| If the executable or path name has a space in it, there is a risk that
| a different executable could be run because of the way the function
| parses spaces. Avoid the following example, because the function
| attempts to run "Program.exe", if it exists, instead of "MyApp.exe".
…
| If a malicious user were to create an application called "Program.exe"
| on a system, any program that incorrectly calls CreateProcess using
| the Program Files directory will run this application instead of the
| intended application.
|
| To avoid this problem, do not pass NULL for lpApplicationName.
| If you do pass NULL for lpApplicationName, use quotation marks around
| the executable path in lpCommandLine, as shown in the example below.

"Long" filenames were introduced 20 years ago, but M$FTs developers still
can't handle them properly, and their QA is unable to detect such silly
and trivial to spot bugs!

regards
Stefan Kanthak

PS: yes, it needs administrative privileges to write C:\Program.exe.
BUT: all the user account(s) created during Windows setup have
administrative privileges.

PPS: NO, the user account control is NO security boundary!

 <http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2526083>

| Same-desktop Elevation in UAC is not a security boundary and can be hijacked
| by unprivileged software that runs on the same desktop. Same-desktop
| Elevation should be considered a convenience feature, and from a security
| perspective, "Protected Administrator" should be considered the equivalent
| of "Administrator."