Patch Tuesday - September 2023

Last updated at Wed, 29 May 2024 21:41:12 GMT

Microsoft is addressing 65 vulnerabilities this September Patch Tuesday, including two zero-day vulnerabilities, as well as four critical remote code execution (RCE) vulnerabilities, and six republished third-party vulnerabilities.

Word: zero-day NTLM hash disclosure

Microsoft Word receives a patch for CVE-2023-36761, which is marked as exploited in the wild as well as publicly disclosed; successful exploitation results in disclosure of NTLM hashes from a malicious opened document via the Preview Pane. This could provide an attacker with the means to “Pass the Hash” and authenticate remotely without resorting to brute force.

Microsoft is clearly concerned about the potential impact of CVE-2023-36761, since they are providing patches not only for current versions of Word, but also for Word 2013, which reached its Extended End Date back in April 2023. In March, Microsoft patched CVE-2023-23397, a vulnerability in Outlook which also led to NTLM hash leaks, and which received significant attention at the time.

Streaming Service Proxy: zero-day elevation to SYSTEM

The second zero-day vulnerability patched this month is CVE-2023-36802, an elevation of privilege vulnerability in Microsoft Streaming Service Proxy, which could grant SYSTEM privileges via exploitation of a kernel driver. Microsoft has detected in-the-wild exploitation, but is not aware of publicly available exploit code. This is a debut Patch Tuesday appearance for Microsoft Streaming Service, but with several researchers from across the globe acknowledged on the advisory, it’s unlikely to be the last. Today’s confirmation of in-the-wild exploitation prior to publication all but guarantees that this will remain an area of interest.

Internet Connection Sharing: same-network critical RCE

CVE-2023-38148 describes a critical remote code execution (RCE) in the Windows Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) functionality. Although the advisory is light on detail, it’s likely that successful exploitation would lead to arbitrary code execution on the ICS host at SYSTEM level. The silver lining is that the attack cannot be carried out from another network, so attackers must first establish an adjacent foothold.

Visual Studio & .NET: critical RCE via malicious package file

This month’s three other critical RCE vulnerabilities have quite a lot in common: CVE-2023-36792, CVE-2023-36793, and CVE-2023-36796 all rely on the user opening a malicious package file, and are thus classed as arbitrary code execution rather than no-interaction RCE. In each case, patches are available for a long list of Visual Studio and .NET installations. Organizations with large developer headcount are likely to be disproportionately at risk.

Exchange (as usual):  RCE

Microsoft is patching five vulnerabilities in Exchange this month. Although Microsoft doesn’t rate any of these higher than “Important” under their proprietary severity rating system, three of the five are RCE vulnerabilities with CVSSv3 base score of 8.0. CVE-2023-36744 CVE-2023-36745, and CVE-2023-36756 would surely receive higher severity if not for several mitigating factors. Successful exploitation requires that the attacker must be present on the same LAN as the Exchange server, and must already possess valid credentials for an Exchange user. Additionally, Microsoft notes that the August 2023 patches already protect against these newly published vulnerabilities, further underscoring the value of timely patching.

SharePoint: elevation to admin

SharePoint receives a patch for CVE-2023-36764, which allows an attacker to achieve administrator privileges via a specially-crafted ASP.NET page. As is often the case with SharePoint vulnerabilities, a level of access is already required, but Site Member privileges are typically widely granted.

Azure DevOps Server: elevation of privilege & RCE

Azure DevOps Server receives two fixes this month. While CVE-2023-38155 requires that an attacker carry out significant recon and preparation of the environment, successful exploitation would lead to administrator privileges. Potentially of greater concern is CVE-2023-33136, which allows an attacker with Queue Build permissions to abuse an overridable input variable to achieve RCE. While most DevOps Server installations are hopefully managed by people both willing and able to apply prompt upgrades, CI/CD environments are prime targets for supply chain attacks.

They do it with Mira

A vulnerability in the Windows implementation of wireless display standard Miracast allows for an unauthenticated user to project to a vulnerable system. Although CVE-2023-38147 requires that an attacker be in close physical proximity to the target, consider that wireless display technology is often used in high-traffic environments such as conventions, which could allow an opportunistic attacker to inflict reputational damage. While exploitation requires that the target asset is configured to allow "Projecting to this PC" and marked as "Available Everywhere" – and Microsoft points out that this is not the default configuration – most administrators will know from long experience that many users will simply select whichever options cause them the least friction.

Summary Charts

Summary Table

Apps vulnerabilities

Azure vulnerabilities

Azure Developer Tools vulnerabilities

Browser vulnerabilities

Developer Tools vulnerabilities

Exchange Server vulnerabilities

Microsoft Dynamics vulnerabilities

Microsoft Office vulnerabilities

System Center vulnerabilities

Windows vulnerabilities

Windows ESU vulnerabilities