According to Leviev, he wanted to test the protection Windows offers against downgrade attacks.
To his surprise, Windows barely has any fail safes to prevent unauthorized OS rollbacks.
The downgrades he made remained undetectable and persistent, meaning they were invisible to Windows Update andsystem recoverytools.
They’re also irreversible.
The attack would trick the victim into thinking their machine is up-to-date (as Windows Update would confirm).
The researcher warns that Windows might not be the only operating system vulnerable to downgrade attacks.
There have been no attacks in the wild using this attack vector, which is good news.
But Leviev demoed it at Black Hat USA 2024 and DEF CON 32 2024.
He also reached out to Microsoft in February, when he first identified these threats.
Source: Alon Leviev viaSafebreach
