SmartScreen Vulnerability: CVE-2024-21412 Facts and Fixes
On Feb. 13, 2024, Microsoft issued a patch for CVE-2024-21412, a Microsoft Defender SmartScreen vulnerability revolving around internet shortcuts. Previously, we discovered that an advanced persistent threat (APT) group we track under the name Water Hydra has been exploiting CVE-2024-21412 in a sophisticated campaign targeting financial market traders, allowing the group to bypass Microsoft Defender SmartScreen and infect its victims with the DarkMe remote access trojan (RAT). Threat actors are constantly finding new ways of identifying and exploiting gaps to bypass security measures. We found that the bypass of CVE-2023-36025 (a previously patched SmartScreen vulnerability) led to the discovery and exploitation of CVE-2024-21412. This highlights how threat actors can circumvent patches by identifying new vectors of attack around a patched software component. It is important that organizations are able to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities, especially zero-days, in a timely mann