By just putting in a Razer mouse or keyboard, a Razer Synapse zero-day vulnerability that has been publicly published on Twitter enables you to take control of Windows as an administrator.

A well-known maker of computer accessories, Razer is well recognised for their gaming keyboards and mice.

The Razer Synapse programme will immediately download and start installing on a computer when a Razer device is plugged into Windows 10 or Windows 11. Users can set up macros, map buttons, and modify their gear using the software Razer Synapse.

Over 100 million people use Razer Synapse, according to Razer, who claims that number.

The plug-and-play Razer Synapse installation contains a zero-day vulnerability that, when exploited, allows users to swiftly gain SYSTEM access on a Windows system. This vulnerability was found by security researcher jonhat.

The greatest user rights in Windows, known as SYSTEM privileges, provide users the ability to run any command on the operating system. Basically, if a user has Windows’ SYSTEM capabilities, they have total control over the system and are able to install anything they want, including malicious software.

Razer had yet to respond, so yesterday jonhat revealed the zero-day vulnerability on Twitter and provided a little video explaining how the flaw operates.

Using a mouse while plugged in to gain access to the SYSTEM
We chose to test the flaw as BleepingComputer has a Razer mouse handy. We can confirm that it took us roughly two minutes to get SYSTEM rights in Windows 10 after plugging in our mouse.

It should be emphasised that this is a local privilege escalation (LPE) vulnerability, requiring physical access to a computer and a Razer device. To exploit the problem, all you need to do is purchase a $20 Razer mouse from Amazon and plug it into a Windows 10 computer.

On one of our Windows 10 machines, we set up a temporary ‘Test’ user with ordinary, non-administrator capabilities to test this flaw.

When we connected the Razer device to Windows 10, the operating system downloaded and set up both the driver and the Razer Synapse application automatically.

The Razer installation application got SYSTEM access as a result of the RazerInstaller.exe executable being started by a Windows process with SYSTEM privileges, as demonstrated below.

The setup procedure lets you choose the folder where the Razer Synapse software will be installed when you install it. Everything goes wrong when you have the choice of where to install your software.

The “Choose a Folder” window will show up when you move your folder. When you right-click the dialogue while holding down Shift, you will be given the option to “Open PowerShell window here,” which will launch a PowerShell prompt in the folder displayed in the dialogue.

This PowerShell prompt will inherit the same rights as the process that launched it because it was run with SYSTEM permissions.

As you can see in the screenshot below, after typing the “whoami” command at the PowerShell prompt, it became clear that the console has SYSTEM capabilities, enabling us to execute whatever command we like.

According to Will Dormann, a Vulnerability Analyst at the CERT/CC, other applications installed by the Windows plug-and-play mechanism is likely to include similar flaws.

Razer will address the flaw
Razer has contacted the security researcher to let them know that they will be delivering a remedy after this zero-day issue attracted significant notice on Twitter.

Despite the fact that the vulnerability was made public, Razer also informed the researcher that he would be getting a bug bounty payment.