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**The Security Updates table indicates that this vulnerability affects all supported versions of Microsoft Windows. Why are IE Cumulative updates listed for Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2012, and Windows Server 2012 R2?** While Microsoft has announced retirement of the Internet Explorer 11 application on certain platforms and the Microsoft Edge Legacy application is deprecated, the underlying MSHTML, EdgeHTML, and scripting platforms are still supported. The MSHTML platform is used by Internet Explorer mode in Microsoft Edge as well as other applications through WebBrowser control. The EdgeHTML platform is used by WebView and some UWP applications. The scripting platforms are used by MSHTML and EdgeHTML but can also be used by other legacy applications. Updates to address vulnerabilities in the MSHTML platform and scripting engine are included in the IE Cumulative Updates; EdgeHTML and Chakra changes are not applicable to those platforms. To stay fully ...

**How could an attacker exploit the vulnerability?** An authenticated attacker could make specially crafted API calls that lead to a Denial of Service.

**How could an attacker exploit this vulnerability?** An unauthenticated attacker could use a specially crafted application to leverage a protocol vulnerability in Windows Kerberos to perform a denial of service attack against the target.

**According to the CVSS metric, the attack vector is local (AV:L). Why does the CVE title indicate that this is a remote code execution?** The word **Remote** in the title refers to the location of the attacker. This type of exploit is sometimes referred to as Arbitrary Code Execution (ACE). The attack itself is carried out locally. For example, when the score indicates that the **Attack Vector** is **Local** and **User Interaction** is **Required**, this could describe an exploit in which an attacker, through social engineering, convinces a victim to download and open a specially crafted file from a website which leads to a local attack on their computer.

**What privileges could be gained by an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability?** An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges.

Mitigation refers to a setting, common configuration, or general best-practice, existing in a default state, that could reduce the severity of exploitation of a vulnerability. The following mitigations might apply in your situation: Set the **LmCompatabilityLvl** to its maximum value (5) for all machines. This will prevent the usage of the older NTLMv1 protocol, while still allowing NTLMv2. Please see Network security: LAN Manager authentication level for more information.

**What type of information could be disclosed by this vulnerability?** The type of information that could be disclosed if an attacker successfully exploited this vulnerability is an out of bounds read in the caller's address space memory.

**According to the CVSS metric, the attack complexity is high (AC:H). What does that mean for this vulnerability?** Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to win a race condition.

**How could an attacker exploit this vulnerability?** An attacker could exploit this vulnerability by tricking a user into sending a request to a malicious server. This could result in the server returning malicious data that might cause arbitrary code execution on the user's system.

**What privileges could be gained by an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability?** An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges.