Patch Tuesday is back, and this time it lands on Valentine’s Day. This is fitting because I love keeping my environment secure from the latest threats. I have yet to find the appropriate card, but I hope to find one that says, “I love how this month we closed 75 vulnerabilities, nine of which are critical and two that are already exploited.”
Here’s to one more month of expressing our true love. This month seems to love very high-rated exploits as we have four that are rated a 9.8 on the CVSS. Let’s head to the lowlights!
Some highlights (or lowlights)
CVE-2023-21689, CVE-2023-21690, CVE-2023-21692: I lumped these together because they are all 9.8 and all impact Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP). These have a network attack vector, no required privileges, and no user interaction. If your network policy is configured to allow PEAP, this is something you will want to look at right away.
CVE-2023-21716: This is a 9.8 that impacts Microsoft Word. Here’s what makes it so highly rated: If a malicious file shows up in the preview pane, an attacker could run code in the logged-on user’s context. This means your users would not even need to open the file to be infected. This has a network attack rating and requires no privileges or user interaction.
CVE-2023-21715: Now, we've finally moved from the 9.8s into the already exploited vulnerabilities. This exploit comes in at a 7.3 and impacts Microsoft Publisher. It has a local attack vector, does require some permissions, and needs user interaction. Overall, this one is not likely to make the list if it had not already been exploited. It involves the attacker using social engineering to get a user to go to a specially crafted website that leads to a local attack on that computer.
Wrapping up
I have the emotional range of a robot, so I turned to AI to help me express myself the way I wish I could.
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
I'm so glad it's Patch Tuesday,
'Cause I'm thinking of you.
I'm here to make sure,
Your computer is secure,
I'm so glad it's Patch Tuesday,
So I can show you I care.
That’s all I got. Now, go patch your crap. If you are using PDQ Deploy and PDQ Inventory, it’s likely that this is already done. Behold the power of automation.
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