Headline
Fat Patch Tuesday, February 2024 Edition
Microsoft Corp. today pushed software updates to plug more than 70 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related products, including two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in active attacks.
Microsoft Corp. today pushed software updates to plug more than 70 security holes in its Windows operating systems and related products, including two zero-day vulnerabilities that are already being exploited in active attacks.
Top of the heap on this Fat Patch Tuesday is CVE-2024-21412, a “security feature bypass” in the way Windows handles Internet Shortcut Files that Microsoft says is being targeted in active exploits. Redmond’s advisory for this bug says an attacker would need to convince or trick a user into opening a malicious shortcut file.
Researchers at Trend Micro have tied the ongoing exploitation of CVE-2024-21412 to an advanced persistent threat group dubbed “Water Hydra,” which they say has being using the vulnerability to execute a malicious Microsoft Installer File (.msi) that in turn unloads a remote access trojan (RAT) onto infected Windows systems.
The other zero-day flaw is CVE-2024-21351, another security feature bypass — this one in the built-in Windows SmartScreen component that tries to screen out potentially malicious files downloaded from the Web. Kevin Breen at Immersive Labs says it’s important to note that this vulnerability alone is not enough for an attacker to compromise a user’s workstation, and instead would likely be used in conjunction with something like a spear phishing attack that delivers a malicious file.
Satnam Narang, senior staff research engineer at Tenable, said this is the fifth vulnerability in Windows SmartScreen patched since 2022 and all five have been exploited in the wild as zero-days. They include CVE-2022-44698 in December 2022, CVE-2023-24880 in March 2023, CVE-2023-32049 in July 2023 and CVE-2023-36025 in November 2023.
Narang called special attention to CVE-2024-21410, an “elevation of privilege” bug in Microsoft Exchange Server that Microsoft says is likely to be exploited by attackers. Attacks on this flaw would lead to the disclosure of NTLM hashes, which could be leveraged as part of an NTLM relay or “pass the hash” attack, which lets an attacker masquerade as a legitimate user without ever having to log in.
“We know that flaws that can disclose sensitive information like NTLM hashes are very valuable to attackers,” Narang said. “A Russian-based threat actor leveraged a similar vulnerability to carry out attacks – CVE-2023-23397 is an Elevation of Privilege vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook patched in March 2023.”
Microsoft notes that prior to its Exchange Server 2019 Cumulative Update 14 (CU14), a security feature called Extended Protection for Authentication (EPA), which provides NTLM credential relay protections, was not enabled by default.
“Going forward, CU14 enables this by default on Exchange servers, which is why it is important to upgrade,” Narang said.
Rapid7’s lead software engineer Adam Barnett highlighted CVE-2024-21413, a critical remote code execution bug in Microsoft Office that could be exploited just by viewing a specially-crafted message in the Outlook Preview pane.
“Microsoft Office typically shields users from a variety of attacks by opening files with Mark of the Web in Protected View, which means Office will render the document without fetching potentially malicious external resources,” Barnett said. “CVE-2024-21413 is a critical RCE vulnerability in Office which allows an attacker to cause a file to open in editing mode as though the user had agreed to trust the file.”
Barnett stressed that administrators responsible for Office 2016 installations who apply patches outside of Microsoft Update should note the advisory lists no fewer than five separate patches which must be installed to achieve remediation of CVE-2024-21413; individual update knowledge base (KB) articles further note that partially-patched Office installations will be blocked from starting until the correct combination of patches has been installed.
It’s a good idea for Windows end-users to stay current with security updates from Microsoft, which can quickly pile up otherwise. That doesn’t mean you have to install them on Patch Tuesday. Indeed, waiting a day or three before updating is a sane response, given that sometimes updates go awry and usually within a few days Microsoft has fixed any issues with its patches. It’s also smart to back up your data and/or image your Windows drive before applying new updates.
For a more detailed breakdown of the individual flaws addressed by Microsoft today, check out the SANS Internet Storm Center’s list. For those admins responsible for maintaining larger Windows environments, it often pays to keep an eye on Askwoody.com, which frequently points out when specific Microsoft updates are creating problems for a number of users.
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The second zero-day vulnerability found in Windows NTLM in the past two months paves the way for relay attacks and credential theft. Microsoft has no patch, but released updated NTLM cyberattack mitigation advice.
Introduction In February 2024, we released an update to Exchange Server which contained a security improvement referenced by CVE-2024-21410 that enabled Extended Protection for Authentication (EPA) by default for new and existing installs of Exchange 2019. While we’re currently unaware of any active threat campaigns involving NTLM relaying attacks against Exchange, we have observed threat actors exploiting this vector in the past.
The November 2024 Patch Tuesday update contains a substantially high percentage of remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities (including a critical issue in Windows Kerberos), and two other zero-day bugs that have been previously disclosed and could soon come under attack.
Microsoft on Tuesday shipped fixes to address a total of 90 security flaws, including 10 zero-days, of which six have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 90 bugs, seven are rated Critical, 79 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. This is also in addition to 36 vulnerabilities that the tech giant resolved in its Edge browser since last month. The Patch Tuesday
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Microsoft patched a record number of 147 new CVEs this month, though only three are rated "Critical."
If only Patch Tuesdays came around infrequently -- like total solar eclipse rare -- instead of just creeping up on us each month like The Man in the Moon. Although to be fair, it would be tough for Microsoft to eclipse the number of vulnerabilities fixed in this month's patch batch -- a record 147 flaws in Windows and related software.
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By Waqas The #MonikerLink security flaw in Microsoft Outlook allows hackers to execute arbitrary code on the targeted device. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: New MonikerLink Flaw Exposes Outlook Users to Data Theft and Malware
One of Microsoft's Patch Tuesday fixes has flipped from "Likely to be Exploited" to “Exploitation Detected”.
Microsoft has issued patches for 73 security vulnerabilities in its February 2024 Patch Tuesday.
Microsoft has issued patches for 73 security vulnerabilities in its February 2024 Patch Tuesday.
Microsoft has issued patches for 73 security vulnerabilities in its February 2024 Patch Tuesday.
Although considered of moderate risk, one of the vulnerabilities is being actively exploited in the wild — CVE-2024-21351, a security feature bypass vulnerability in Windows SmartScreen.
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The threat actors behind the Mispadu banking Trojan have become the latest to exploit a now-patched Windows SmartScreen security bypass flaw to compromise users in Mexico. The attacks entail a new variant of the malware that was first observed in 2019, Palo Alto Networks Unit 42 said in a report published last week. Propagated via phishing mails, Mispadu is a Delphi-based information stealer
By Waqas The new variant of Mispadu Stealer was discovered by Palo Alto's Unit 42 researchers while investigating the Windows Defender SmartScreen vulnerability. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Mispadu Stealer’s New Variant Targets Browser Data of Mexican Users
Threat actors have been observed leveraging a now-patched security flaw in Microsoft Windows to deploy an open-source information stealer called Phemedrone Stealer. “Phemedrone targets web browsers and data from cryptocurrency wallets and messaging apps such as Telegram, Steam, and Discord,” Trend Micro researchers Peter Girnus, Aliakbar Zahravi, and Simon Zuckerbraun said. “It also
By Deeba Ahmed Attackers Leveraging Windows Vulnerability in Phemedrone Malware Campaign for Enhanced Stealth. This is a post from HackRead.com Read the original post: Windows Defender SmartScreen Vulnerability Exploited with Phemedrone Stealer
The Computer Emergency Response Team of Ukraine (CERT-UA) has warned of a new phishing campaign orchestrated by the Russia-linked APT28 group to deploy previously undocumented malware such as OCEANMAP, MASEPIE, and STEELHOOK to harvest sensitive information. The activity, which was detected by the agency between December 15 and 25, 2023, targets government entities
A new phishing campaign is leveraging decoy Microsoft Word documents as bait to deliver a backdoor written in the Nim programming language. "Malware written in uncommon programming languages puts the security community at a disadvantage as researchers and reverse engineers' unfamiliarity can hamper their investigation," Netskope researchers Ghanashyam Satpathy and Jan Michael Alcantara
Microsoft has released fixes to address 63 security bugs in its software for the month of November 2023, including three vulnerabilities that have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 63 flaws, three are rated Critical, 56 are rated Important, and four are rated Moderate in severity. Two of them have been listed as publicly known at the time of the release. The updates are in
Microsoft today released updates to fix more than five dozen security holes in its Windows operating systems and related software, including three "zero day" vulnerabilities that Microsoft warns are already being exploited in active attacks.
In all, this set of vulnerabilities Microsoft patched includes 57 vulnerabilities, 54 of which are considered “important.”
Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
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Zero-day vulnerabilities in Windows Installers for the Atera remote monitoring and management software could act as a springboard to launch privilege escalation attacks. The flaws, discovered by Mandiant on February 28, 2023, have been assigned the identifiers CVE-2023-26077 and CVE-2023-26078, with the issues remediated in versions 1.8.3.7 and 1.8.4.9 released by Atera on April 17, 2023, and
Microsoft on Tuesday released updates to address a total of 130 new security flaws spanning its software, including six zero-day flaws that it said have been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 130 vulnerabilities, nine are rated Critical and 121 are rated Important in severity. This is in addition to eight flaws the tech giant patched in its Chromium-based Edge browser towards the end of
Categories: Exploits and vulnerabilities Categories: News Tags: Microsoft Tags: Adobe Tags: Apple Tags: Android Tags: Cisco Tags: Fortinet Tags: MOVEit Tags: Mozilla Tags: SAP Tags: VMware Tags: CVE-2023-32049 Tags: CVE-2023-35311 Tags: CVE-2023-32046 Tags: CVE-2023-36874 Tags: CVE-2023-36844 For the July 2023 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has issued security updates for 130 vulnerabilities, four of which are known to have been actively exploited. (Read more...) The post Update now! Microsoft patches a whopping 130 vulnerabilities appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.
Microsoft Corp. today released software updates to quash 130 security bugs in its Windows operating systems and related software, including at least five flaws that are already seeing active exploitation. Meanwhile, Apple customers have their own zero-day woes again this month: On Monday, Apple issued (and then quickly pulled) an emergency update to fix a zero-day vulnerability that is being exploited on MacOS and iOS devices.
Four of the disclosed vulnerabilities — albeit “important” ones — have been detected being exploited in the wild: CVE-2023-32046, CVE-2023-32049, CVE-2023-35311 and CVE-2023-36874.
Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
**According to the CVSS metric, user interaction is required (UI:R). What interaction would the user have to do?** The user would have to click on a specially crafted URL to be compromised by the attacker.
Microsoft has disclosed that it's detected a spike in credential-stealing attacks conducted by the Russian state-affiliated hacker group known as Midnight Blizzard. The intrusions, which made use of residential proxy services to obfuscate the source IP address of the attacks, target governments, IT service providers, NGOs, defense, and critical manufacturing sectors, the tech giant's threat
Cybersecurity researchers have shared details about a now-patched security flaw in Windows MSHTML platform that could be abused to bypass integrity protections on targeted machines. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-29324 (CVSS score: 6.5), has been described as a security feature bypass. It was addressed by Microsoft as part of its Patch Tuesday updates for May 2023. Akamai security
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Snowballing PoC exploits for CVE-2023-23397 and a massive attack surface means almost business user could be a victim.
Cisco Talos is urging all users to update Microsoft Outlook after the discovery of a critical vulnerability, CVE-2023-23397, in the email client that attackers are actively exploiting in the wild.
Microsoft's Patch Tuesday update for March 2023 is rolling out with remediations for a set of 80 security flaws, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Eight of the 80 bugs are rated Critical, 71 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. The updates are in addition to 29 flaws the tech giant fixed in its Chromium-based Edge browser in recent weeks. The
Microsoft's Patch Tuesday update for March 2023 is rolling out with remediations for a set of 80 security flaws, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Eight of the 80 bugs are rated Critical, 71 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. The updates are in addition to 29 flaws the tech giant fixed in its Chromium-based Edge browser in recent weeks. The
Categories: Exploits and vulnerabilities Categories: News Tags: patch Tuesday Tags: March Tags: 2023 Tags: Microsoft Tags: Adobe Tags: Fortinet Tags: Android Tags: SAP Tags: CVE-2023-23397 Tags: CVE-2023-24880 Tags: CVE-2023-26360 Tags: CVE-2022-41328 This Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released fixes for two actively exploited zero-days and Adobe has fixed one. (Read more...) The post Update now! Microsoft fixes two zero-day bugs appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.
Security vendors urge organizations to fix the actively exploited bugs, in Microsoft Outlook and the Mark of the Web feature, immediately.
Security vendors urge organizations to fix the actively exploited bugs, in Microsoft Outlook and the Mark of the Web feature, immediately.
Microsoft disclosed 83 vulnerabilities across the company’s hardware and software line, including two issues that are actively being exploited in the wild, continuing a trend of zero-days appearing in Patch Tuesdays over the past few months.
Microsoft disclosed 83 vulnerabilities across the company’s hardware and software line, including two issues that are actively being exploited in the wild, continuing a trend of zero-days appearing in Patch Tuesdays over the past few months.
Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
May 9, 2023 update: Releases for Microsoft Products has been updated with the release of CVE-2023-29324 - Security Update Guide - Microsoft - Windows MSHTML Platform Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability March 24, 2023 update: Impact Assessment has been updated to a link to Guidance for investigating attacks using CVE-2023-23397 - Microsoft Security Blog.
**What is the relationship between Mark of the Web and Windows SmartScreen?** When you download a file from the internet, Windows adds the zone identifier or Mark of the Web as an NTFS stream to the file. So, when you run the file, Windows SmartScreen checks if there is a zone identifier Alternate Data Stream (ADS) attached to the file. If the ADS indicates ZoneId=3 which means that the file was downloaded from the internet, the SmartScreen does a reputation check. For more information on SmartScreen, please visit Microsoft Defender SmartScreen overview | Microsoft Learn.
**According to the CVSS metrics, successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to major loss of confidentiality (C:H), integrity (I:H) and availability (A:H). What does that mean for this vulnerability?** An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could access a user's Net-NTLMv2 hash which could be used as a basis of an NTLM Relay attack against another service to authenticate as the user.
Plus: Patches for Apple iOS 16, Google Chrome, Windows 10, and more.
Hello everyone! This episode will be about Microsoft Patch Tuesday for December 2022, including vulnerabilities that were added between November and December Patch Tuesdays. As usual, I use my open source Vulristics project to analyse and prioritize vulnerabilities. Alternative video link (for Russia): https://vk.com/video-149273431_456239112 But let’s start with an older vulnerability. This will be another example why […]
Microsoft has released its final monthly batch of security updates for 2022, fixing more than four dozen security holes in its various Windows operating systems and related software. The most pressing patches include a zero-day vulnerability in a Windows feature that tries to flag malicious files from the Web, a critical bug in PowerShell, and a dangerous flaw in Windows 11 systems that was detailed publicly prior to this week's Patch Tuesday.
Categories: Exploits and vulnerabilities Categories: News Tags: patch Tuesday Tags: Microsoft Tags: Android Tags: Apple Tags: Mozilla Tags: Google Tags: Sap Tags: Citrix Tags: Fortinet Tags: Cisco Tags: CVE-2022-44698 Tags: MotW Tags: CVE-2022-44710 Tags: race condition Tags: CVE-2022-44670 Tags: CVE-2022-44676 Tags: CVE-2022-41076 Tags: remote powershell The last patch Tuesday of 2022 is here—find out what Microsoft and many others have fixed (Read more...) The post Update now! Two zero-days fixed in 2022's last patch Tuesday appeared first on Malwarebytes Labs.
Tech giant Microsoft released its last set of monthly security updates for 2022 with fixes for 49 vulnerabilities across its software products. Of the 49 bugs, six are rated Critical, 40 are rated Important, and three are rated Moderate in severity. The updates are in addition to 24 vulnerabilities that have been addressed in the Chromium-based Edge browser since the start of the month.
Here's what you need to patch now, including six critical updates for Microsoft's final Patch Tuesday of the year.
Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability.
Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability