In this month’s Patch Tuesday, Microsoft addresses 44 CVEs, including two vulnerabilities publicly disclosed, and one zero-day exploited in the wild. Below is comment from Satnam Narang, staff research engineer, Tenable.
“This month’s Patch Tuesday release includes 44 CVEs, seven of which are rated critical. Following last month, which saw 116 CVEs patched, this is the second time in 2021 that Microsoft has patched less than 50 CVEs.
“In this month’s release, Microsoft addressed three vulnerabilities in Windows Print Spooler, which has been a major focus over the last few months following patches for CVE-2021-1675 as well as CVE-2021-34527, also known as PrintNightmare.
“Two of the three Print Spooler vulnerabilities patched this month, CVE-2021-36947 and CVE-2021-36936 are rated as “Exploitation More Likely,” according to Microsoft’s Exploitability Index. CVE-2021-36936 is also identified as being Publicly Disclosed, which implies this is one of the additional vulnerabilities researchers have uncovered since PrintNightmare was first disclosed. Because of the ubiquitous nature of the Windows Print Spooler within networks, organizations should prioritize patching these flaws as soon as possible.
‘Microsoft also patched CVE-2021-36948, a zero-day elevation of privilege vulnerability in the Windows Update Medic Service that was reportedly exploited in the wild. It was reported internally by Microsoft’s security research teams and is the only vulnerability patched this month that was exploited in the wild as a zero-day.” — Satnam Narang, staff research engineer, Tenable