December 2022 Patch Tuesday fixed 2 zero-day flaws

Microsoft released December 2022 Patch Tuesday security updates that fix 52 vulnerabilities across its products.

Microsoft December 2022 Patch Tuesday security updates addressed 52 vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows and Windows Components; Azure; Office and Office Components; SysInternals; Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based); SharePoint Server; and the .NET framework. 12 of these vulnerabilities were submitted through the ZDI program.

Six vulnerabilities are rated Critical, 43 Important, and three are Moderate in severity. Microsoft December 2022 Patch Tuesday security updates fixed two zero-day vulnerabilities; one of the new issues addressed this month is listed as publicly known at the time of release, and one is actively exploited.

The actively exploited zero-day is a Windows SmartScreen security feature bypass vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-44698.

“An attacker can craft a malicious file that would evade Mark of the Web (MOTW) defenses, resulting in a limited loss of integrity and availability of security features such as Protected View in Microsoft Office, which rely on MOTW tagging.” reads the advisory published by the IT giant.

Another interesting flaw addressed by Microsoft is a DirectX Graphics Kernel elevation of privilege vulnerability tracked as CVE-2022-44710.

“An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges.” reads the advisory. “Successful exploitation of this vulnerability requires an attacker to win a race condition.”

The full list of CVEs released by Microsoft for December 2022 is available here.

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Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs – hacking, December 2022 Patch Tuesday)

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Pierluigi Paganini

Pierluigi Paganini is member of the ENISA (European Union Agency for Network and Information Security) Threat Landscape Stakeholder Group and Cyber G7 Group, he is also a Security Evangelist, Security Analyst and Freelance Writer. Editor-in-Chief at "Cyber Defense Magazine", Pierluigi is a cyber security expert with over 20 years experience in the field, he is Certified Ethical Hacker at EC Council in London. The passion for writing and a strong belief that security is founded on sharing and awareness led Pierluigi to find the security blog "Security Affairs" recently named a Top National Security Resource for US. Pierluigi is a member of the "The Hacker News" team and he is a writer for some major publications in the field such as Cyber War Zone, ICTTF, Infosec Island, Infosec Institute, The Hacker News Magazine and for many other Security magazines. Author of the Books "The Deep Dark Web" and “Digital Virtual Currency and Bitcoin”.