Microsoft Patch Tuesday Recap: 12 Critical Bugs Fixed

Microsoft today released patches for 63 vulnerabilities as part of its November Patch Tuesday update. Twelve of the bugs were deemed Critical, two were publicly known at the time of release, and one is reportedly under active attack.

The bug being exploited is CVE-2018-8589, a Windows Win32k elevation of privilege vulnerability. It was reported by researchers as Kaspersky Labs, a sign attackers are using it in malware, notes Dustin Childs of Trend Micro's Zero-Day Initiative. Malware leverages kernel elevation bugs to escalate to admin mode, which gives them full control of a target system.

Two publicly known vulnerabilities are CVE-2018-8584, a Windows ALPC elevation of privilege vulnerability, and CVE-2018-8566, a BitLocker security feature bypass vulnerability. The former affects Windows 10, Server 2016, and Server 2019, says Tenable deputy CTO Glen Pendley, and it could let non-admins access and delete files on systems normally limited to adminstrators.

"This flaw is serious, as an attacker could leverage it to perform a number of functions, including DLL [dynamically link library] hijacking," Pendley says. "In this attack scenario, a cybercriminal can delete and input their own DLL that contains malicious code." He advises security teams to apply the patch immediately.

Nine of the 12 Critical bugs are remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities in the Chakra scripting engine in Microsoft Edge. All RCE bugs exist in the way the engine handles objects in memory. The additional three Critical bugs exist in the Windows Deployment Services TFTP Server, Microsoft Graphics Components, and Windows VBScript Engine.

Because Microsoft Edge is the default Web browser in Windows 10, Pendley recommends companies that rely on Edge to apply patches in a timely manner.

Read more details here.

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