Binary Planting Attack on Windows Platforms in Creditcoin

Vulnerability Description

Creditcoin is a network that enables cross-blockchain credit transactions. The Windows binary of the Creditcoin node loads a suite of DLLs provided by Microsoft at startup. If a malicious user has access to overwrite the program files directory it is possible to replace these DLLs and execute arbitrary code. It is the view of the blockchain development team that the threat posed by a hypothetical binary planting attack is minimal and represents a low-security risk. The vulnerable DLL files are from the Windows networking subsystem, the Visual C++ runtime, and low-level cryptographic primitives. Collectively these dependencies are required for a large ecosystem of applications, ranging from enterprise-level security applications to game engines, and don’t represent a fundamental lack of security or oversight in the design and implementation of Creditcoin. The blockchain team takes the stance that running Creditcoin on Windows is officially unsupported and at best should be thought of as experimental.

References

• https://github.com/gluwa/creditcoin/security/advisories/GHSA-cx5c-xwcv-vhmq
• https://owasp.org/www-community/attacks/Binary_planting