Microsoft patches 6 zero-day vulnerabilities under active attack

Microsoft on June 8 deployed patches for 50 vulnerabilities, including six zero-days under active attack, the company reports.

Fifty is a relatively small number for Microsoft’s monthly security releases – most of its 2020 rollouts exceeded 100 – but this Patch Tuesday packs a punch. The CVEs that were addressed affect Microsoft Windows, Office, Edge browser, SharePoint Server, .NET Core and Visual Studio, Hyper-V, Visual Studio Code – Kubernetes Tools, Windows HTML Platform, and Windows Remote Desktop.

The six flaws being exploited in the wild include one remote code execution bug, an information disclosure vulnerability, and four elevation-of-privilege flaws. One of these is classified as Critical; the other five are categorized Important. Two zero-days were publicly known at the time of disclosure; one vulnerability patched today is publicly known but not under attack.

Critical zero-day CVE-2021-33742, a remote code execution bug in the Windows MSHTML platform, has a CVSS score of 7.5 and was publicly known at the time it was patched. Attackers could successfully exploit this and execute code on a target system if they can convince a victim to view specially crafted Web content. Microsoft notes an attack requires some user interaction, though an attacker does not require access to files or settings in order to succeed.

“Since the vulnerability is in the Trident (MSHTML) engine itself, many different applications are impacted – not just Internet Explorer,” writes Dustin Childs of the Zero-Day Initiative in a blog post. “It’s not clear how widespread the active attacks are, but considering the vulnerability impacts all supported Windows versions, this should be at the top of your test and deploy list.”

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