Vupen discovers Windows 8 zero-day exploit for sale

Controversial French security firm Vupen, which sells software vulnerability information to governments and businesses, has claimed it has discovered a zero-day exploit in Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system and the latest iteration of the company's browser, Internet Explorer 10. Last week, Vupen CEO Chaouki Bekrar tweeted that “various” IE10 and Windows 8 vulnerabilities had been combined to circumvent exploit mitigation safeguards in Windows 8, which was released to the public on Oct. 26. The exploit was reportedly not disclosed to Microsoft, nor was its price made public. Vupen did reveal that the zero-day could allow a particularly skilled hacker to bypass embedded security measures, which include high-entropy address space layout randomization (HiASLR), anti-return oriented programming (AntiROP), data execution prevention (DEP) and protected-mode sandbox.