Security

December Microsoft Patch Tuesday addresses 19 Critical browser issues

Microsoft released Patch Tuesday updates for December 2017 that address more than 30 vulnerabilities, including 19 Critical browser issues.

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for December 2017 that address more than 30 vulnerabilities, including 19 critical flaws affecting the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers.

Microsoft addressed several memory corruption flaws that can be exploited for remote code execution. Most of the vulnerabilities reside in the browser’s scripting engine, an attack can trigger them by tricking the victim into visiting a specially crafted website or a site that serves malicious ads.

Microsoft acknowledged researchers from Google, Palo Alto Networks, McAfee and Qihoo 360 for finding the issues.

The list of vulnerabilities fixed this month includes “important” information disclosure flaw tracked as CVE-2017-11927. The vulnerability affects the Windows its:// protocol handler, where the InfoTech Storage Format (ITS) is the storage format used in CHM files.

“An information disclosure vulnerability exists when the Windows its:// protocol handler unnecessarily sends traffic to a remote site in order to determine the zone of a provided URL. This could potentially result in the disclosure of sensitive information to a malicious site.” read the security advisory published by Microsoft.

“To exploit the vulnerability an attacker would have to trick a user into browsing to a malicious website or to an SMB or UNC path destination. An attacker who successfully tricked a user into disclosing the user’s NTLM hash could attempt a brute-force attack to disclose the corresponding hash password.”

The list of flaws addressed by Microsoft also includes a collection of information disclosure issues in Office, a privilege escalation vulnerability affecting SharePoint, a spoofing issue in Exchange, and a remote code execution vulnerability in Excel.

The good news is that according to Microsoft, none of the vulnerabilities addressed with the December Patch Tuesday has been exploited in attacks or disclosed publicly before fixes were released.

Adobe has also published its December Patch Tuesday, this month the company only patched one moderate severity vulnerability in Flash Player.

[adrotate banner=”9″] [adrotate banner=”12″]

Pierluigi Paganini

(Security Affairs – December Patch Tuesday, hacking)

[adrotate banner=”5″]

[adrotate banner=”13″]

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”.

Recent Posts

MITRE revealed that nation-state actors breached its systems via Ivanti zero-days

The MITRE Corporation revealed that a nation-state actor compromised its systems in January 2024 by…

14 hours ago

FBI chief says China is preparing to attack US critical infrastructure

China-linked threat actors are preparing cyber attacks against U.S. critical infrastructure warned FBI Director Christopher…

1 day ago

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) investigates data breach

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has initiated an investigation into an alleged ransomware attack…

1 day ago

FIN7 targeted a large U.S. carmaker with phishing attacks

BlackBerry reported that the financially motivated group FIN7 targeted the IT department of a large…

2 days ago

Law enforcement operation dismantled phishing-as-a-service platform LabHost

An international law enforcement operation led to the disruption of the prominent phishing-as-a-service platform LabHost.…

2 days ago

Previously unknown Kapeka backdoor linked to Russian Sandworm APT

Russia-linked APT Sandworm employed a previously undocumented backdoor called Kapeka in attacks against Eastern Europe since…

2 days ago

This website uses cookies.