Microsoft November 2024 Patch Tuesday fixes 4 zero-days, 91 flaws

Today is Microsoft’s November 2024 Patch Tuesday, which includes security updates for 91 flaws, including four zero-days, two of which are actively exploited.

This Patch Tuesday fixed four critical vulnerabilities, which include two remote code execution and two elevation of privileges flaws.

The number of bugs in each vulnerability category is listed below:

• 26 Elevation of Privilege vulnerabilities
• 2 Security Feature Bypass vulnerabilities
• 52 Remote Code Execution vulnerabilities
• 1 Information Disclosure vulnerability
• 4 Denial of Service vulnerabilities
• 3 Spoofing vulnerabilities

This count does not include two Edge flaws that were previously fixed on November 7th.

To learn more about the non-security updates released today, you can review our dedicated articles on the new Windows 11 KB5046617 and KB5046633 cumulative updates.

Four zero-days disclosed

This month’s Patch Tuesday fixes four zero-days, two of which were actively exploited in attacks, and three were publicly disclosed.

Microsoft classifies a zero-day flaw as one that is publicly disclosed or actively exploited while no official fix is available.

The two actively exploited zero-day vulnerabilities in today’s updates are:

CVE-2024-43451 – NTLM Hash Disclosure Spoofing Vulnerability

Microsoft has fixed a vulnerability that exposes NTLM hashes to remote attackers with minimal interaction with a malicious file.

“This vulnerability discloses a user’s NTLMv2 hash to the attacker who could use this to authenticate as the user,” explained Microsoft.

“Minimal interaction with a malicious file by a user such as selecting (single-click), inspecting (right-click), or performing an action other than opening or executing could trigger this vulnerability,” continued Microsoft.

Microsoft says Israel Yeshurun of ClearSky Cyber Security discovered this vulnerability and that it was publicly disclosed, but did not share any further details.

CVE-2024-49039 – Windows Task Scheduler Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

A specially crafted application could be executed that elevates privilege to Medium Integrity level.

“In this case, a successful attack could be performed from a low privilege AppContainer. The attacker could elevate their privileges and execute code or access resources at a higher integrity level than that of the AppContainer execution environment,” explained Microsoft.

Microsoft says that exploiting this vulnerability would allow attackers to execute RPC functions that are normally restricted to privileged accounts.

The flaw was discovered by Vlad Stolyarov and Bahare Sabouri of Google’s Threat Analysis Group.

It is not known how the flaw was exploited in attacks.

The other three vulnerabilities that were publicly disclosed but not exploited in attacks are:

CVE-2024-49040 – Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability

Microsoft has fixed a Microsoft Exchange vulnerability that allows threat actors to spoof the sender’s email address in emails to local recipients.

“Microsoft is aware of a vulnerability (CVE-2024-49040) that allows attackers to run spoofing attacks against Microsoft Exchange Server,” explains a related advisory by Microsoft.

“The vulnerability is caused by the current implementation of the P2 FROM header verification, which happens in transport.”

Starting with this month’s Microsoft Exchange security updates, Microsoft is now detecting and flagging spoofed emails with an alert prepended to the email body that states, “Notice: This email appears to be suspicious. Do not trust the information, links, or attachments in this email without verifying the source through a trusted method.”

Microsoft says the flaw was discovered by Slonser at Solidlab, who publicly disclosed the flaw in this article.

CVE-2024-49019 – Active Directory Certificate Services Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

Microsoft fixed a flaw that allows attackers to gain domain administrator privileges by abusing built-in default version 1 certificate templates.

“Check if you have published any certificates created using a version 1 certificate template where the Source of subject name is set to “Supplied in the request” and the Enroll permissions are granted to a broader set of accounts, such as domain users or domain computers,” explains Microsoft.

“An example is the built-in Web Server template, but it is not vulnerable by default due to its restricted Enroll permissions.”

The flaw was discovered by Lou Scicchitano, Scot Berner, and Justin Bollinger with TrustedSec, who disclosed the “EKUwu” vulnerability in October.

“Using built-in default version 1 certificate templates, an attacker can craft a CSR to include application policies that are preferred over the configured Extended Key Usage attributes specified in the template,” reads TrustedSec’s report.

“The only requirement is enrollment rights, and it can be used to generate client authentication, certificate request agent, and codesigning certificates using the WebServer template.”

As explained above, CVE-2024-43451 was also publicly disclosed.

Recent updates from other companies

Other vendors who released updates or advisories in November 2024 include:

• Adobe released security updates for numerous applications, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and Commerce.
• Cisco releases security updates for multiple products, including Cisco Phones, Nexus Dashboard, Identity Services Engine, and more.
• Citrix releases security updates for NetScaler ADC and NetScaler Gateway vulnerabilities. They also released an update for the Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops reported by Watchtowr.
• Dell releases security updates for code execution and security bypass flaws in SONiC OS.
• D-Link releases a security update for a critical DSL6740C flaw that allows modification of account passwords.
• Ivanti releases security updates for twenty-five vulnerabilities in Ivanti Connect Secure (ICS), Ivanti Policy Secure (IPS), Ivanti Secure Access Client (ISAC).
• SAP releases security updates for multiple products as part of November Patch Day.
• Schneider Electric releases security updates for flaws in Modicon M340, Momentum, and MC80 products.
• Siemens released a security update for a critical 10/10 flaw in TeleControl Server Basic tracked as CVE-2024-44102.

The November 2024 Patch Tuesday Security Updates

Below is the complete list of resolved vulnerabilities in the November 2024 Patch Tuesday updates.

To access the full description of each vulnerability and the systems it affects, you can view the full report here.

Update 9/11/24: Updated to explain that only three flaws were actively exploited and why CVE-2024-43491 was marked as exploited.