Microsoft Patch Tuesday — January 2019 Security Updates Released

Just one of the security vulnerabilities patched by the tech
giant this month has been reported as being publicly known at the
time of release, and none are being actively exploited in the
wild.

All the seven critical-rated vulnerabilities lead to remote code
execution and primarily impact various versions of Windows 10 and
Server editions.

Two of the 7 critical flaws affect Microsoft’s Hyper-V host OS
that fails to properly validate input from an authenticated user on
a guest operating system, three affect the ChakraCore scripting
engine that fails to properly handle objects in memory in Edge, one
affects Edge directly that occurs when the browser improperly
handles objects in memory, and one impacts the Windows DHCP client
that fails to properly handle certain DHCP responses.

The publicly disclosed flaw but not exploited in the wild,
identified as CVE-2019-0579 and rated as important, concerns a
remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability in the Windows Jet
Database engine that could be exploited to execute arbitrary code
on a victim’s system by tricking him into opening a
specially-crafted file.

Other “Important” vulnerabilities are addressed in the .NET
framework, MS Exchange Server, Edge, Internet Explorer, SharePoint,
the Office suite, Windows Data Sharing Service, Visual Studio,
Outlook, and Windows Subsystem for Linux.

One of the MS Office flaws patched this month is an information
disclosure bug (CVE-2019-0560) which exists when Microsoft Office
improperly discloses the contents of its memory.

Attackers can exploit this vulnerability by tricking a user into
opening a specially crafted Office document. Successful
exploitation could allow an attacker to obtain information from the
Office memory that can later be used to compromise a victim’s
computer or data.

Microsoft credited Tal Dery and Menahem Breuer of Mimecast
Research Labs for this vulnerability. To know more details about
their findings, you can head on to an advisory^[2] and a blog
post^[3] published by
Mimecast.

Lock Screen Bypass Flaw in Skype for Android Also Patched

Another notable bug patched by Microsoft this month is a privilege
vulnerability (CVE-2019-0622) vulnerability in Skype for Android
that could have allowed hackers to bypass the lock screen and
access personal data on an Android device—by merely answering a
Skype call to that device.
The Skype flaw has been rated as ‘moderate’ and requires an
attacker to have physical access to your device. A patch for this
vulnerability was included in the December 23 release of Skype, but
Skype for Android users need to manually update the app from Google
Play.

Although Microsoft does not list this as publicly known, the
researcher posted a YouTube video demonstrating the vulnerability
back on December 31.

Though not part of this months patch update, users are also
recommended to download the latest update to patch a memory
corruption vulnerability (CVE-2018-8653) in Internet Explorer that
Microsoft addressed by releasing an out of band patch in December,
as the flaw continues to be exploited in the wild.

Users and system administrators are strongly recommended to
apply the latest security patches as soon as possible to keep
hackers and cybercriminals away from taking control of their
systems.

For installing the latest security patch updates, head on to
Settings → Update & Security → Windows Update → Check for updates,
on your computer system or you can install the updates
manually.

^[1]