patch Tuesday | Breaking Cybersecurity News | The Hacker News

Microsoft has released its Patch Tuesday updates for October 2023, addressing a total of  103 flaws  in its software, two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Of the 103 flaws, 13 are rated Critical and 90 are rated Important in severity. This is apart from  18 security vulnerabilities  addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser since the second Tuesday of September. The two vulnerabilities that have been weaponized as zero-days are as follows - CVE-2023-36563  (CVSS score: 6.5) - An information disclosure vulnerability in Microsoft WordPad that could result in the leak of NTLM hashes CVE-2023-41763  (CVSS score: 5.3) - A privilege escalation vulnerability in Skype for Business that could lead to exposure of sensitive information such as IP addresses or port numbers (or both), enabling threat actors to gain access to internal networks "To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would first have to log on to the system. An atta...

Microsoft has linked the exploitation of a recently disclosed critical flaw in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server to a nation-state actor it tracks as  Storm-0062  (aka DarkShadow or Oro0lxy). The tech giant's threat intelligence team said it observed in-the-wild abuse of the vulnerability since September 14, 2023. "CVE-2023-22515 is a critical privilege escalation vulnerability in Atlassian Confluence Data Center and Server," the company  noted  in a series of posts on X (formerly Twitter). "Any device with a network connection to a vulnerable application can exploit CVE-2023-22515 to create a Confluence administrator account within the application." CVE-2023-22515 , rated 10.0 on the CVSS severity rating system, allows  remote attackers  to create unauthorized Confluence administrator accounts and access Confluence servers. The flaw has been addressed in the following versions - 8.3.3 or later 8.4.3 or later, and 8.5.2 (Long Term Suppor...

Most microsegmentation projects fail before they even get off the ground—too complex, too slow, too disruptive. But Andelyn Biosciences proved it doesn't have to be that way.  Microsegmentation: The Missing Piece in Zero Trust Security   Security teams today are under constant pressure to defend against increasingly sophisticated cyber threats. Perimeter-based defenses alone can no longer provide sufficient protection as attackers shift their focus to lateral movement within enterprise networks. With over 70% of successful breaches involving attackers moving laterally, organizations are rethinking how they secure internal traffic.  Microsegmentation has emerged as a key strategy in achieving Zero Trust security by restricting access to critical assets based on identity rather than network location. However, traditional microsegmentation approaches—often involving VLAN reconfigurations, agent deployments, or complex firewall rules—tend to be slow, operationally disrupt...

Microsoft has released software fixes to  remediate 59 bugs  spanning its product portfolio, including two zero-day flaws that have been actively exploited by malicious cyber actors. Of the 59 vulnerabilities, five are rated Critical, 55 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. The update is in addition to  35 flaws  patched in the Chromium-based Edge browser since last month's Patch Tuesday edition, which also encompasses a fix for  CVE-2023-4863 , a critical heap buffer overflow flaw in the WebP image format. The two Microsoft vulnerabilities that have come under active exploitation in real-world attacks are listed below - CVE-2023-36761  (CVSS score: 6.2) - Microsoft Word Information Disclosure Vulnerability CVE-2023-36802  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Microsoft Streaming Service Proxy Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability "Exploiting this vulnerability could allow the disclosure of  NTLM hashes ," the Windows maker said in an ...

Adobe's  Patch Tuesday update  for September 2023 comes with a patch for a critical actively exploited security flaw in Acrobat and Reader that could permit an attacker to execute malicious code on susceptible systems. The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2023-26369, is rated 7.8 for severity on the CVSS scoring system and impacts both Windows and macOS versions of Acrobat DC, Acrobat Reader DC, Acrobat 2020, and Acrobat Reader 2020. Described as an out-of-bounds write, successful exploitation of the bug could lead to code execution by opening a specially crafted PDF document. Adobe did not disclose any additional details about the issue or the targeting involved. "Adobe is aware that CVE-2023-26369 has been exploited in the wild in limited attacks targeting Adobe Acrobat and Reader," the company  acknowledged  in an advisory. CVE-2023-26369 affects the below versions - Acrobat DC (23.003.20284 and earlier versions) - Fixed in 23.006.20320 Acrobat Reader DC (23...

Microsoft has patched a total of  74 flaws  in its software as part of the company's Patch Tuesday updates for August 2023, down from the voluminous 132 vulnerabilities the company fixed last month. This comprises six Critical, 67 Important, and one Moderate severity vulnerabilities. Released along with the security improvements are two defense-in-depth updates for Microsoft Office ( ADV230003 ) and the Memory Integrity System Readiness Scan Tool ( ADV230004 ). The updates are also in addition to 30 issues addressed by Microsoft in its Chromium-based Edge browser since last month's Patch Tuesday edition and one side-channel flaw impacting certain processor models offered by AMD ( CVE-2023-20569  or  Inception ). ADV230003 concerns an already known security flaw tracked as  CVE-2023-36884 , a remote code execution vulnerability in Office and Windows HTML that has been actively exploited by the Russia-linked RomCom threat actor in attacks targeting Ukraine as...

Microsoft on Tuesday released updates to address a total  of 132 new security flaws  spanning its software, including six zero-day flaws that it said have been actively exploited in the wild. Of the 132 vulnerabilities, nine are rated Critical, 122 are rated Important in severity, and one has been assigned a severity rating of "None." This is in addition to  eight flaws  the tech giant patched in its Chromium-based Edge browser towards the end of last month. The list of issues that have come under active exploitation is as follows - CVE-2023-32046  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows MSHTML Platform Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2023-32049  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2023-35311  (CVSS score: 8.8) - Microsoft Outlook Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability CVE-2023-36874  (CVSS score: 7.8) - Windows Error Reporting Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability CVE-2023-36884  (CVS...

Microsoft has rolled out fixes for its Windows operating system and other software components to remediate major security shortcomings as part of  Patch Tuesday updates  for June 2023. Of the 73 flaws, six are rated Critical, 63 are rated Important, two are rated Moderate, and one is rated Low in severity. This also includes three issues the tech giant addressed in its Chromium-based Edge browser. It's worth noting that Microsoft also closed out  26 other flaws  in Edge – all of them rooted in Chromium itself – since the release of May Patch Tuesday updates. This comprises  CVE-2023-3079 , a zero-day bug that Google disclosed as being actively exploited in the wild last week. The June 2023 updates also mark the first time in several months that doesn't feature any zero-day flaw in Microsoft products that's publicly known or under active attack at the time of release. Topping the list of fixes is  CVE-2023-29357  (CVSS score: 9.8), a privilege esc...

Microsoft has rolled out  Patch Tuesday updates  for May 2023 to address 38 security flaws, including two zero-day bugs that it said are being actively exploited in the wild. Trend Micro's Zero Day Initiative (ZDI)  said  the volume is the lowest since August 2021, although it pointed out that "this number is expected to rise in the coming months." Of the 38 vulnerabilities, six are rated Critical and 32 are rated Important in severity. Eight of the flaws have been tagged with "Exploitation More Likely" assessment by Microsoft. This is aside from  18 flaws  – including 11 bugs since the start of May – the Windows maker resolved in its Chromium-based Edge browser following the release of April Patch Tuesday updates. Topping the list is  CVE-2023-29336  (CVSS score: 7.8), a privilege escalation flaw in Win32k that has come under active exploitation. It's not immediately clear how widespread the attacks are. "An attacker who successfully explo...

It's the second Tuesday of the month, and Microsoft has released another set of security updates to fix  a total of 97 flaws  impacting its software, one of which has been actively exploited in ransomware attacks in the wild. Seven of the 97 bugs are rated Critical and 90 are rated Important in severity. Interestingly, 45 of the shortcomings are remote code execution flaws, followed by 20 elevation of privilege vulnerabilities. The updates also follow fixes for 26 vulnerabilities in its Edge browser that were released over the past month. The security flaw that's come under active exploitation is  CVE-2023-28252  (CVSS score: 7.8), a privilege escalation bug in the Windows Common Log File System (CLFS) Driver. "An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges," Microsoft said in an advisory, crediting researchers Boris Larin, Genwei Jiang, and Quan Jin for reporting the issue. CVE-2023-28252 is the fourth privilege escalatio...

Microsoft's Patch Tuesday update for March 2023 is rolling out with remediations for a set of  80 security flaws , two of which have come under active exploitation in the wild. Eight of the 80 bugs are rated Critical, 71 are rated Important, and one is rated Moderate in severity. The updates are in  addition to 29 flaws  the tech giant fixed in its Chromium-based Edge browser in recent weeks. The two vulnerabilities that have come under active attack include a Microsoft Outlook privilege escalation flaw ( CVE-2023-23397 , CVSS score: 9.8) and a Windows SmartScreen security feature bypass ( CVE-2023-24880 , CVSS score: 5.1). CVE-2023-23397 is "triggered when an attacker sends a message with an extended MAPI property with a UNC path to an SMB (TCP 445) share on a threat actor-controlled server," Microsoft  said  in a standalone advisory. A threat actor could leverage this flaw by sending a specially crafted email, activating it automatically when it is retrie...