It’s December of 2018 and, to hell with it, just patch your stuff

December 12, 2018 TH Author

Microsoft, Adobe, and SAP are finishing up the year with a flurry of activity, combining to patch more than 140 CVE-listed security flaws between them.

In-the-wild worries from Microsoft

The December patch bundle from Microsoft addresses a total of 39 vulnerabilities, including one that is publicly known and another that is being targeted in the wild.

The bug currently being exploited is CVE-2018-8611, an elevation of privilege flaw in the Windows kernel. Researchers with Kaspersky Lab said the flaw, which allows for code to run in kernel mode, is being used in tandem with other vulnerabilities to install malware.

Meanwhile, a denial of service flaw in the .NET Framework, CVE-2018-8517, has been publicly disclosed but has not been targeted in the wild yet. In addition, .Net Framework is also the culprit in CVE-2018-8540, a remote code execution bug.

Dustin Childs of the Trend Micro Zero Day Initiative notes that enterprises should pay special attention to CVE-2018-8626, a heap overflow flaw in Windows DNS Server that would allow an attacker to run code as the LocalSystem Account.

“Exploiting this vulnerability is as easy as sending a specially crafted request to an affected DNS server. Since DNS servers are designed to handle requests, there’s no other real defense beyond applying the patch,” Childs explained.

“If you’re running DNS servers in your enterprise, definitely prioritize this one.”

As usual, the Edge and Internet Explorer browsers were popular targets for bug-hunters. Chakra, the scripting engine for Edge, received fixes for five different remote code execution bugs, while Internet Explorer was subject to two remote code flaw fixes, one (CVE-2018-8631) for a memory corruption bug, and another (CVE-2018-8619) in VBScript.

Office users and admins will want to be sure they install the patches for information disclosure (CVE-2018-8627) and remote code execution (CVE-2018-8636) in Excel as well as a remote code execution bug in PowerPoint (CVE-2018-8628) and a cross-site-scripting flaw in Office SharePoint (CVE-2018-8650).

Generous Adobe gives out 87 Reader and Acrobat fixes

Adobe is closing out the year with a massive load of fixes for its two PDF apps.

The Windows and Mac versions of both Reader and Acrobat will be getting fizes for 87 different CVE-listed vulnerabilities.

Of those 87 flaws, 36 would potentially be exploited for code execution, 48 would allow information disclosure, and three could be exploited for elevation of privilege.

SAP joins the fun with 17 of its own patches

Enterprise giant SAP, meanwhile, has also delivered a fresh crop of bug fixes.

According to security firm Onapsis, admins should pay particular attention to CVE-2018-2505, a cross-site scripting bug in Hybris Commerce storefronts and CVE-2018-2475, a missing authorization check in Customizing Tools (a component of S4/HANA and Netweaver ABAP) that could potentially be used in a man-in-the-middle attack.

SAP also issued a fix for 23 vulnerabilities in the Chromium components of Business Client and patches for CVE-2018-2503 and CVE-2018-2492, a missing default authorization and a bad XML validation check in NetWeaver AS Java. ®

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