"Security Researcher Accidentally Discovers Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 Zero-Day"
A security researcher accidentally discovered a zero-day vulnerability that affects the Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 operating systems while working on a Windows security tool. The vulnerability stems from two misconfigured registry keys for the RPC Endpoint Mapper and DNSCache service, which are part of Windows systems. According to the researcher who found the vulnerability, an attacker can modify the registry keys to activate a sub-key that is usually used by the Windows Performance Monitoring mechanism. On Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008, performance subkeys allow developers to load custom DLLs that run with SYSTEM-level privileges. This article continues to discuss the discovery, potential exploitation, and disclosure of the zero-day vulnerability impacting Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.