Microsoft Patch Tuesday addresses a zero-day vulnerability in Windows Kernel

THREAT LEVEL: Amber.

For a detailed advisory, download the pdf file here

Microsoft addressed 51 vulnerabilities in the February 2022 patch Tuesday release, one of which was classified as a zero-day vulnerability. A remote attacker could exploit some of these vulnerabilities to gain control of a vulnerable system. These vulnerabilities affect multiple products such as Microsoft Excel,  Azure Data Explorer, Teams, SQL server.

Out of the 51 flaws, 50 of them are rated important while one of them is rated moderate making it one of the few patches Tuesdays to not fix any critical vulnerabilities. Microsoft also addressed  19 chromium-based flaws in Microsoft edge which was assigned by Google.

The publicly disclosed zero-day bug has been assigned CVE-2022-21989  and has not been confirmed exploited in the wild. An attacker requires to take additional actions prior to exploitation to prepare the target environment for the successful exploitation of this vulnerability

Potential Mitre ATT&CK TTPs are :

TA0004: Privilege EscalationT1068: Exploitation for Privilege Escalation

Vulnerability Details

Patch Link

https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/vulnerability/CVE-2022-21989

References

https://msrc.microsoft.com/update-guide/releaseNote/2022-Feb

https://thehackernews.com/2022/02/microsoft-and-other-major-software.html

https://www.zerodayinitiative.com/blog/2022/2/8/the-february-2022-security-update-review