Microsoft’s October 2022 Patch Tuesday Addresses 84 CVEs (CVE-2022-41033)

CVE-2022-41033 | Windows COM+ Event System Service elevation of privilege vulnerability

CVE-2022-41033 is an EoP vulnerability in the Windows COM+ Event System Service, which enables system event notifications for COM+ component services. It received a CVSSv3 score of 7.8. An authenticated attacker could exploit this vulnerability to elevate privileges on a vulnerable system and gain SYSTEM privileges.

Microsoft says that this vulnerability has been exploited in the wild, though no additional information was shared.

CVE-2022-37968 | Azure Arc-enabled kubernetes cluster connect elevation of privilege vulnerability

CVE-2022-37968 is an EoP vulnerability in Microsoft’s Azure Arc, affecting the cluster connect feature of Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters. With a CVSSv3 score of 10, the highest possible rating, an unauthenticated attacker could exploit this vulnerability in order to gain administrative privileges for a Kubernetes cluster. While updates have been released, users that do not have auto-upgrade enabled must take action to manually upgrade Azure Arc-enabled Kubernetes clusters. Microsoft’s security advisory provides additional information and steps to upgrade and how to check your current version. In July, Tenable disclosed a vulnerability in Azure Arc wherein passwords were being logged in plaintext. You can read more about the disclosure on the Tenable Techblog.

CVE-2022-38028 | Windows Print Spooler elevation of privilege vulnerability

CVE-2022-38028 is an EoP vulnerability in Windows Print Spooler components that received a CVSSv3 score of 7.8 and was rated “Exploitation More Likely” according to Microsoft’s Exploitability Index. Exploitation would allow an attacker to gain SYSTEM privileges. The flaw was disclosed to Microsoft by the National Security Agency. This marks the third EoP vulnerability in Windows Print Spooler credited to the NSA this year, following CVE-2022-29104 and CVE-2022-30138 in May.

CVE-2022-38053, CVE-2022-41036, CVE-2022-41037 and CVE-2022-41038 | Microsoft SharePoint Server remote code execution vulnerability

CVE-2022-38053, CVE-2022-41036, CVE-2022-41037 and CVE-2022-41038 are RCE vulnerabilities in Microsoft SharePoint Server that all received a CVSSv3 score of 8.8. All except CVE-2022-41037 were rated “Exploitation More Likely,” and CVE-2022-41038 is the only one that has a critical rating. To exploit these vulnerabilities, a network-based attacker would need to be authenticated to the target SharePoint site with permission to use Manage Lists.

CVE-2022-37988, CVE-2022-37990, CVE-2022-37991, CVE-2022-37995, CVE-2022-38022, CVE-2022-38037, CVE-2022-38038 and CVE-2022-38039 | Windows Kernel elevation of privilege vulnerability

CVE-2022-37988, CVE-2022-37990, CVE-2022-37991, CVE-2022-37995, CVE-2022-38022, CVE-2022-38037, CVE-2022-38038 and CVE-2022-38039 are EoP vulnerabilities in the Windows Kernel. With the exception of CVE-2022-38022, all the CVEs received CVSSv3 scores of 7.8 and could allow an attacker to elevate their privileges to SYSTEM. CVE-2022-38022 was scored CVSSv3 of 2.5 and would only allow an attacker to delete empty folders as SYSTEM. The attacker would not be able to view or edit files, nor delete folders that were not empty.

CVE-2022-41043 | Microsoft Office information disclosure vulnerability

CVE-2022-41043 is an information disclosure vulnerability affecting Microsoft Office for Mac. While exploitation requires local access to the host, this was the only publicly disclosed vulnerability patched this month. It is credited to Cody Thomas with SpecterOps.

CVE-2022-37976 | Active Directory Certificate Services elevation of privilege vulnerability

CVE-2022-37976 is an EoP vulnerability affecting Active Directory Certificate Services. According to the advisory, a malicious Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) client could be used to entice a DCOM server to authenticate to the client, allowing an attacker to perform a cross-protocol attack and gain domain administrator privileges. While Microsoft rates this as “Exploitation Less Likely,” ransomware groups often seek out vulnerabilities and misconfigurations in Active Directory to leverage for spreading malicious payloads across an organization's network. As highlighted in Tenable’s Ransomware Ecosystem report, Active Directory plays a pivotal role in ransomware attacks.