Flaw Not Critical
Microsoft challenged Google's analysis of the Windows flaw in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Charlotte Heesacker.
"We disagree with Google's characterization of a local elevation of privilege as 'critical' and 'particularly serious,' since the attack scenario they describe is fully mitigated by the deployment of the Adobe Flash update released last week," Microsoft said.
After cracking a system, hackers typically try to elevate their privileges in it to obtain access to increasingly sensitive data.
"Additionally, our analysis indicates that this specific attack was never effective against the Windows 10 Anniversary Update due to security enhancements previously implemented," Microsoft noted.
The Windows vulnerability Google's team discovered is a local privilege escalation in the Windows kernel that can be used as a security sandbox escape triggered by a win32k.sys call, according to Mehta and Leonard.
The sandbox in Google's Chrome browser blocks win32k.sys calls using the Win32k lockdown mitigation on Windows 10, which prevents exploitation of the sandbox escape vulnerability, they explained in their post.