Tenable Research Discovers Vulnerability in Zoom that Could Lead to Conference Hijacking

The flaw could potentially allow a threat actor to take control of a victim’s desktop
to download and execute malware

Tenable®, Inc., the Cyber Exposure company, today announced that its research team has discovered a serious vulnerability in Zoom’s Desktop Conferencing Application [CVE-2018-15715] that would allow a remote attacker or rogue meeting attendee to hijack screen controls, impersonate meeting attendees via chat messages and kick attendees out of meetings. The flaw exposes up to 750,000 companies around the world that use Zoom to conduct day-to-day business.

As digital transformation surges and remote workforces become increasingly common, conferencing services like Zoom are nearly ubiquitous. In many ways, Zoom has become the new conference room — used by organizations everywhere to host confidential meetings, which can also be recorded and stored in the cloud. Exploitation of this vulnerability could be extremely disruptive and it poses serious reputational risk for organizations that rely on the service for important conferences, such as executive, client and prospect meetings.

A bad actor can leverage the vulnerability to:

1. Hijack screen control: Bypass screen control permissions during remote attendee screen share to completely control the victim’s desktop, allowing the attacker to potentially download and execute malware.
2. Spoof chat messages: Send chat messages that impersonate other users in the meeting.
3. Kick attendees out of the conference: Non-host attendees can kick out and lock out other attendees.

“Conducting business in today’s digital economy requires organizations to adopt new technology and services that keep them connected. But every technology investment potentially opens up new avenues of attack. This vulnerability is the perfect example of the cyber attack surface that is expanded by seemingly innocuous services, like Zoom,” said Renaud Deraison, co-founder and chief technology officer, Tenable. “Tenable Research is focused on finding vulnerabilities and collaborating with vendors to ensure the technology we all rely on — as consumers and businesses — is secure.”

Tenable Research disclosed the vulnerability to Zoom following standard procedures outlined in its vulnerability disclosure policy. The vulnerability affects Zoom version 4.1.33259.0925 for both macOS and Windows and Zoom version 2.4.129780.0915 for Ubuntu. Zoom was responsive and acted quickly to release version 4.1.34814.1119 to fix the vulnerability in Windows and version 4.1.34801.1116 for macOS. Users are urged to ensure their Desktop Conferencing Application is up-to-date.

Tenable has released plugins to assess whether organizations are exposed to this vulnerability. Click here for details on the macOS plugins and here for Windows plugins.

For more information, read the Tenable Research Advisory blog post.

About Tenable

Tenable®, Inc. is the Cyber Exposure company. Over 24,000 organizations around the globe rely on Tenable to understand and reduce cyber risk. As the creator of Nessus®, Tenable extended its expertise in vulnerabilities to deliver the world’s first platform to see and secure any digital asset on any computing platform. Tenable customers include more than 50 percent of the Fortune 500, more than 25 percent of the Global 2000 and large government agencies. Learn more at www.tenable.com.

Contact Information:

Cayla Baker
[email protected]