Purpose of Work:

August's Patch Tuesday has arrived, and it's certainly not a slow one.  There are 121 vulnerabilities being patched this month, compared to 44 in August 2021, and 120 in August 2020.  This makes this month's Patch Tuesday the 2nd most dense month of patching this year, just behind April.  Preliminary reports from early adopters indicate no apparent widespread issues despite Microsoft's heavy patching workload this month, but we'll be sure to roll things out later in the day, and keep an eye out in various external channels and our test environments, in case that changes.

Of these 121 vulnerabilities, two are listed as publicly known, one of those two is under active exploitation, and the exploited vulnerability isn't wormable... so, while the amount of overall vulnerabilities is high (and there are some standouts, as usual), the urgency is about average.

Kicking off the highlights, I'll start with the vulnerability that's already being exploited: a Local Code Execution vulnerability leveraging the Microsoft Windows Support Diagnostic Tool, and affecting all supported versions of Windows and Windows Server ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-34713 ).  While the vulnerability is listed as a 'remote code execution', the CVSS summary makes it clear the vector is local.  Similar to previous MSDT vulnerabilities, however, the code execution can be invoked by an MSDT URL called by any MSDT-aware application, such as Microsoft Word, meaning social engineering and malicious emails are possible 'remote' methods of exploiting this local vector via user interaction.  Those with a lot of end users to look after (such as in VDI or RDS environments) will want to patch this ASAP.

Second on the list is a trio of Elevation of Privilege vulnerabilities, all affecting every supported version of Exchange Server ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-24477 , https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-24516 , https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-21980 ).  Of the 3 in that group, CVE-2022-30134 is publicly disclosed.  There's not a clear picture of how these vulnerabilities work from any authoritative sources, but the fact that it requires administrators patching against it enable Extended Protection ( https://microsoft.github.io/CSS-Exchange/Security/Extended-Protection/ ) implies it's some kind of authentication bypass or MITM attack.  User interaction is listed as required on the CVSS breakdown, so my guess would be the latter.

Third up, we have yet another Remote Code Execution vulnerability leveraging SMB client / Server, and (curiously) only affecting Windows 11 x64 and Arm64 ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-35804 ).  If this vulnerability affected more versions of Windows or Windows server, it'd be of great concern, since it's definitely a wormable vulnerability.  However, it doesn't... so, I have to assume this is specific to some bleeding edge implementation of SMBv3 compression, based on the CVE summary from MSRC.  Windows 11 users should apply patches ASAP, of course.

Fourth on the list, we have an RCE vulnerability leveraging Hyper-V Server on Windows Server 2012 R2 / Windows 10 and newer ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-34696 ).  As is the case with most RCE leveraging Hyper-V, the vector can be a VM on a Hyper-V server, which then sends its payload up the stack to change scope and execute on the Hyper-V server itself.  As is also typical of these vulnerabilities, the complexity is listed as 'high', and a race condition must be met for it to work, meaning even if executed perfectly, probability still plays a role in successful exploitation.

Fifth on the list, there's a Denial of Service vulnerability leveraging Outlook Client, and affecting all supported versions of Outlook ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-35742 ).  This one isn't a showstopper like many vulnerabilities, but it's got the potential to really annoy some end users just trying to use their mail.  Any email crafted to carry a payload that can exploit this vulnerability will cause outlook to crash, then fail to launch.  No amount of cache clearing will help: you'll have to identify and delete the malicious email to get outlook to start, even if it's never opened.  Naturally, patching is preferable to having to do that for a number of users, for those with a lot of end users to look after (VDI or RDS workloads).

Finally, there's more patching against Elevation of Privilege vulnerabilities leveraging Active Directory Certificate Services in all support versions of Windows Server ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-34691 ).  This appears to mention the same hardening measures that were initially rolled out in May 2022, but it's not listed as a revision, nor are these hardening measures being made mandator yet, so we'll be conducting more reviews to see exactly what's being done here.  That said, compatibility mode (mentioned here: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/kb5014754-certificate-based-authentication-changes-on-windows-domain-controllers-ad2c23b0-15d8-4340-a468-4d4f3b188f16 ) seems to still be in effect.

That's all for the highlights, but as usual, there's plenty more where that came from, all reviewable at https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide with the proper filtering.


Impact of Work:


All affected hosts that are 2012 and up will be rebooted automatically / ASAP to propagate fixes, starting at 10:45PM, with some exceptions.

Internal systems on Windows 2012 and up (such as the management portal) may be temporarily impacted in the time it takes to reboot them.  Mail delivery to our helpdesk may be temporarily halted while our mail servers are updated as part of this patch cycle.  If you receive a delivery failure, you can still reach us by logging directly into the helpdesk and submitting a ticket directly via the portal, or calling us at 303-414-6910 x2, for emergencies.  


Hypervisors in a failover cluster will have rolling reboots done, in order to eliminate VPS downtime on said clusters.  Hypervisors not in a failover cluster will either be updated overnight, or have their updates scheduled, depending on customer policy / VM density.

Hypervisors in DR scenarios will be updated one hour early, as they are not running active workloads.

Any hosts where updates are managed directly by the customer (or an approval process is required for zero-day updates) will not be impacted; the controlling organizations will be notified separately.


Please contact us with any questions / comments / concerns.

Purpose of Work:

May's Patch Tuesday has arrived, and it's a relatively average one in terms of patch volume.  That said, there's a few publicly known vulnerabilities in the mix (one with with active exploitation detected), so we'll be proceeding on schedule.  Initial reports of post-patch experience are relatively normal.

Starting off the highlights this month, we have an LSA Spoofing vulnerability affecting all supported versions of Windows Server ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-26925).  This one is detected as being in the wild, and the vulnerability's complexity is labelled 'high', and reading through it, that tracks.  The most dangerous use case of this seems to be that an attacker gets a domain controller to authenticate against a malicious host using unauthenticated LSARPC calls.  From there, they can use captured credentials to access anything in the domain.  We'll be applying this patch, and giving the guidance article linked in that CVE a thorough review for any additional practices we or fully managed clients should implement to make NTLM relaying itself much more difficult.

Second off, we have an elevation of privilege vulnerability leveraging Active directory certificate services, and affecting Windows Server 2012 / Windows 8 and up ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-26923 ).  This one has been publicly disclosed, and allows a user with delegation rights for any computer accounts the ability to issue themselves a certificate that would grant domain administrator rights.  We'll be applying this on our own domain controllers, and will evaluate which clients on an independent update schedule are most vulnerable to this, tommorow.

Third, we have another remote code execution vulnerability leveraging Windows NFS Server, and affecting all supported versions of windows ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-26937 ).  We do not run NFS Server in our environment, but anybody who does (likely somebody with a tightly integrated windows/linux environment), will want to read up on this vulnerability, since it's wormable. 

Fourth up, there's an elevation of privilege vulnerability affecting all supported versions of Exchange Server ( https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-21978).  This one requires administrator roles and rights on the exchange server (and the host it's on), but can potentially elevate a user's rights to the domain administrator level.  Naturally, we'll be patching all managed exchange servers tonight.


There's more, as usual, but those are the ones of particular note.


Impact of Work:


All affected hosts that are 2012 and up will be rebooted automatically / ASAP to propagate fixes, starting at 10:15PM, with some exceptions.

Internal systems on Windows 2012 and up (such as the management portal) may be temporarily impacted in the time it takes to reboot them.  Mail delivery to our helpdesk may be temporarily halted while our mail servers are updated as part of this patch cycle.  If you receive a delivery failure, you can still reach us by logging directly into the helpdesk and submitting a ticket directly via the portal, or calling us at 303-414-6910 x2, for emergencies.  


Hypervisors in a failover cluster will have rolling reboots done, in order to eliminate VPS downtime on said clusters.  Hypervisors not in a failover cluster will either be updated overnight, or have their updates scheduled, depending on customer policy / VM density.

Hypervisors in DR scenarios will be updated one hour early, as they are not running active workloads.

Any hosts where updates are managed directly by the customer (or an approval process is required for zero-day updates) will not be impacted; the controlling organizations will be notified separately.


Please contact us with any questions / comments / concerns.