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Update your Windows now

By Ng Chong Seng - on 19 Nov 2014, 10:09am

Update your Windows now

The 'Security ID' and 'Account Name' fields don't match, even though they should. Oh no! (Image source: Microsoft.)

You know it’s serious when Microsoft issues a security fix not on the second Tuesday of the month (a.k.a. Patch Tuesday). This time, the unscheduled update is to patch a critical security hole that affects all supported versions of Windows, and which is being actively exploited to hack Windows-based servers.

To be specific, update MS14-068 patches a flaw in the Microsoft Windows Kerberos KBC component, which is used by clients to interact with a network authentication service. The flaw allows attackers with low-level domain user accounts to elevate their privileges to those of a domain administrator account, which as you can imagine, is a nightmare for vulnerable enterprise and government networks. According to Microsoft, the vulnerability is already being exploited in-the-wild in limited, targeted attacks.

As explained by Microsoft engineer Joe Bialek:

The only way a domain compromise can be remediated with a high level of certainty is a complete rebuild of the domain. An attacker with administrative privilege on a domain controller can make a nearly unbounded number of changes to the system that can allow the attacker to persist their access long after the update has been installed. Therefore it is critical to install the update immediately.

While the flaw is more of a problem for server versions of Windows, Microsoft recommends the patch for all systems running any version of Windows.

So, what are you waiting for?

Source: TechNet, MS14-068 Security Bulletin.

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