#SQL Server

**According to the CVSS metric, the attack complexity is high (AC:H). What does that mean for this vulnerability?** The attacker must inject themselves into the logical network path between the target and the resource requested by the victim to read or modify network communications. This is called a machine-in-the-middle (MITM) attack.

**The following mitigating factors might be helpful in your situation:** Exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to trick or convince the victim into connecting to their malicious server. If your environment only connects to known, trusted servers and there is no ability to reconfigure existing connections to point to another location (for example you use TLS encryption with certificate validation), the vulnerability cannot be exploited.

**According to the CVSS metric, user interaction is required (UI:R). What interaction would the user have to do?** An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by tricking an authenticated user (CVSS metric UI:R) into attempting to connect to a malicious SQL server via a connection driver (for example: ODBC and / or OLEDB as applicable).

**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.

**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.

**The following mitigating factors might be helpful in your situation:** Exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to trick or convince the victim into connecting to their malicious server. If your environment only connects to known, trusted servers and there is no ability to reconfigure existing connections to point to another location (for example you use TLS encryption with certificate validation), the vulnerability cannot be exploited.

**According to the CVSS metric, successful exploitation of this vulnerability could lead to total loss of availability (A:H)? What does that mean for this vulnerability?** An attacker could impact availability of the service resulting in Denial of Service (DoS).

**How could an attacker exploit this vulnerability?** An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by tricking an authenticated user into attempting to connect to a malicious SQL server via OLEDB, which could result in the server receiving a malicious networking packet. This could allow the attacker to execute code remotely on the client.

**How could an attacker exploit this vulnerability?** An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by tricking an authenticated user into attempting to connect to a malicious SQL server via OLEDB, which could result in the server receiving a malicious networking packet. This could allow the attacker to execute code remotely on the client.

**The following mitigating factors might be helpful in your situation:** Exploitation of the security issues in the drivers requires multiple steps, the primary of which is the ability of an attacker to direct a client (that they want to compromise) to connect to their malicious server. If your environment only connects to known, trusted servers and there is no ability to direct existing connection configurations to the wrong server (e.g., you use TLS encryption with certificate validation), these issues can not be exploited.