Here’s our 2019 Patch Impact assessment report reformatted with our new “Threatscape” report, showing a more complete assessment of the risk of not installing September’s Patch Tuesday updates in an easily-digestible, at-a-glance report. We’ll be using this format going forward (unfortunately it wasn’t ready in time for this month’s Patch Impact Assessment post).
Vulnerability Assessment
3
PUBLICLY DISCLOSED
2
EXPLOITED
2
ZERO-DAY
This September update cycle brings two zero-days and three publicly reported vulnerabilities in the Windows platform. These two zero-days (CVE-2019-2014 and CVE-2019-1215) have credibly reported exploits which could lead to arbitrary code execution on the target machine. Both browser and Windows updates require immediate attention and your development team will need to spend some time with the latest patches to .NET and .NET Core.
Threatscape
Exploitability
CVE-2019-2014 (Zero-day)
CVE-2019-1215 (Zero-day)
CVE-2019-1208 (Edge and IE)
CVE-2019-1236 (Edge and IE)
CVE-2019-1138 (Chakra)
CVE-2019-1217 (Chakra)
CVE-2019-1237 (Chakra)
CVE-2019-1298 (Chakra)
CVE-2019-1300 (Chakra)
CVE-2019-8070
CVE-2019-8069
Windows
PATCH NOW!
VULNERABILITIES
5
CRITICAL
44
IMPORTANT
1
MODERATE
0
LOW
Microsoft has attempted to address five critical vulnerabilities and a further 44 security issues that have been rated as important by Microsoft. The “elephant in the room” is the two zero-day publicly exploited vulnerabilities.
As mentioned previously, this is a big update, with credible reports of publicly exploited vulnerabilities on the Windows platform. Add this update to your “Patch Now” release schedule.
Browsers
PATCH NOW!
VULNERABILITIES
8
CRITICAL
2
IMPORTANT
8
MODERATE
1
LOW
Microsoft is working to address eight critical updates that could lead to a remote code execution scenario. A pattern is emerging with a recurring set of security issues raised against Chakra Scripting Engine, VBScript and Microsoft Scripting Engine.
All of these issues affect the most recent versions of Windows 10 (both 32-bit and 64-bit) and apply to both Edge and Internet Explorer (IE). The VBScript issues (CVE-2019-1208) and CVE-2019-1236) are particularly nasty as a visit to a website may lead to the inadvertent install of a malicious ActiveX control which then effectively cedes control to an attacker.
Office
SCHEDULE
VULNERABILITIES
3
CRITICAL
7
IMPORTANT
1
MODERATE
0
LOW
Lync 2013 may not be your top priority this month, but the JET and SharePoint issues are serious and will require a response. The Microsoft JET database issues are the cause of most concern, even though Microsoft has rated them important, as they are key dependencies across a broad platform. Microsoft JET has always been difficult to debug and now it seems to be causing security issues every month for the past year.
Dev Tools
SCHEDULE
VULNERABILITIES
6
CRITICAL
6
IMPORTANT
0
MODERATE
0
LOW
Critical updates to Chakra Core and Microsoft Team Foundation server will require immediate attention while the remaining patches should be included in the developer update release schedule. With upcoming major releases to .NET Core this November, we will continue to see large updates in this area. As always, we suggest some thorough testing and a staged release cadence for your development updates.
Adobe
PATCH NOW!
VULNERABILITIES
2
CRITICAL
0
IMPORTANT
0
MODERATE
0
LOW
Adobe is back on form with a critical update included in this month’s regular patch cycle. Adobe’s update (APSB19-46) addresses two memory related issues which could lead to arbitrary code execution on the target platform. Both security issues (CVE-2019-8070 and CVE-2019-8069) have a combined base CVSS score of 8.2, and so we suggest that you add this critical update to your Patch Tuesday release schedule.
