Microsoft Patches 61 Vulns, One Under Active Attack

Microsoft today issued 61 security fixes and two advisories as part of its Patch Tuesday update. Seventeen bugs are considered Critical, 43 are Important, and one is ranked Moderate in severity.

One of the bugs addressed today (CVE-2018-8440) was already under active attack following its Aug. 27 public disclosure via Twitter. The vulnerability, which exists within the Advanced Local Procedure Call (ALPC) function in the Windows Task Manager in Windows 7 to Windows 10, enables attackers to escalate privileges and run code within admin privileges.

Shortly after its disclosure, ESET researchers found the flaw being exploited in a campaign by the PowerPool threat group. Attackers modified the source code, which was posted on Twitter in August along with the zero-day, and launched a targeted campaign to breach and persist on machines in Chile, Germany, India, the Philippines, Poland, Russia, the UK, and the US.

"This bug should be on the top of everyone's deployment list," wrote Dustin Childs, a member of Trend Micro's Zero-Day Initiative, in a blog post on the monthly update.

Also worth noting is Windows remote code execution vulnerability CVE-2018-8475, which could let an attacker execute code by getting a target to view an image. CVE-2018-0965 and CVE-2018-8439 are Windows Hyper-V remote code execution vulnerabilities. With both of these, Childs says, a user on a guest virtual machine could execute code on the underlying hypervisor OS. If he or she has the ability to run programs, an attacker who abuses these could potentially affect other guest operating systems.

The patches and advisories released today covered security issues in Internet Explorer, Azure, Windows, ChakraCore, .NET Framework, SQL Server, and Microsoft Office and Office Services.

Read more details here.

Black Hat Europe returns to London Dec 3-6 2018  with hands-on technical Trainings, cutting-edge Briefings, Arsenal open-source tool demonstrations, top-tier security solutions and service providers in the Business Hall. Click for information on the conference and to register.