Microsoft has finally released its monthly security patches to fix flaws across a large set of its products. This is known as ‘Patch Tuesday Updates’, the security patches have been unleashed to fix a total of 38 vulnerabilities, 9 of which are rated critical.
One of the security patches was dedicated to fixing a most famous bug Windows zero-day vulnerability (CVE-2018-8611). The zero-day vulnerability was abused in two cyberespionage operations in November.
About Windows zero-day vulnerability CVE-2018-8611
The zero-day vulnerability known as CVE-2018-8611 is an escalated privilege vulnerability in the Windows Kernel. According to Microsoft, “ the vulnerability exists when the Windows kernel fails to properly handle objects in memory.”
If successfully exploited, the vulnerability could allow attackers to run random code in kernel mode and conduct several other nefarious activities.
“An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code in kernel mode. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights,” Microsoft said. “To exploit this vulnerability, an attacker would first have to log on to the system. An attacker could then run a specially crafted application to take control of an affected system.”
The flaw was discovered by the security researchers Igor Soumenkov and Boris Larin from Kaspersky Lab. It is believed that the threat groups who were responsible for the exploitation of the zero-day vulnerability are also behind the attacks with CVE-2018-8611.
Flash zero-day vulnerability updated
Among the other security fixes, Microsoft also released an update for another well-known Flash zero-day vulnerability. It was used by Russian state-backed hackers. The zero-day vulnerability tracked as ADV180031, was used by hackers to carry out attacks against Ukraine, by embedding a malicious Flash Active X object inside a Word document.
Other remarkable vulnerabilities that were addressed this month include CVE-2018-8631 (in Internet Explorer), CVE-2018-8624 (in Microsoft Edge) and CVE-2018-8628(in PowerPoint).
