Microsoft March 2013 Black Tuesday Overview

Published: 2013-03-12. Last Updated: 2013-03-13 08:48:46 UTC
by Swa Frantzen (Version: 1)
4 comment(s)

Overview of the March 2013 Microsoft patches and their status.

# Affected Contra Indications - KB Known Exploits Microsoft rating(**) ISC rating(*)
clients servers
MS13-021 The usual MSIE cumulative patch, adding fixes for eight more vulnerabilities. All 8 are of the "use after free" type and they all allow random code execution.  
Replaces MS13-009.
MSIE
CVE-2013-0087
CVE-2013-0088
CVE-2013-0089
CVE-2013-0090
CVE-2013-0091
CVE-2013-0092
CVE-2013-0093
CVE-2013-0094
CVE-2013-1288
KB 2809289 CVE-2013-1288 was made public according to Microsoft. Severity:Critical
Exploitability:1
Critical Important
MS13-022 A double dereference vulnerability that allows random code execution in Silverlight.
This also affects the mac version of silverlight 5. The update is expected via the auto-update feature on Macs.
Replaces MS12-034.
Silverlight

CVE-2013-0074
KB 2814124 No publicly known exploits Severity:Critical
Exploitability:1
Critical Important
MS13-023 A memory management vulnerability allow random code execution in the Visio viewer. The full package is exempt from this problem. 
Replaces MS12-059.
Visio Viewer

CVE-2013-0079
KB 2801261 No publicly known exploits Severity:Critical
Exploitability:2
Critical Important
MS13-024 Four different privilege escalation vulnerabilities in Sharepoint. Of note: it includes an XSS and a directory traversal vulnerability in addition to a problem with callback functions and a buffer overflow.
Replaces MS12-066.
Sharepoint

CVE-2013-0080
CVE-2013-0083
CVE-2013-0084
CVE-2013-0085
KB 2780176 No publicly known exploits. Severity:Critical
Exploitability:1
N/A Critical
MS13-025 A buffer management problem allows leaking arbitrary data in memory. It could expose usernames and passwords of accounts.
OneNote

CVE-2013-0086
KB 2816264 No publicly known exploits. Severity:Important
Exploitability:3
Important Less Urgent
MS13-026 When previewing or opening an email that contain HTML5, outlook for Mac can load content from random webservers without user interaction.
The note is quite confusing. E.g.: every mac capable of running the affected versions has a webkit browser installed together with the OS; Office for Mac 2008 did not have outlook - it had entourage instead; Outlook isn't part of all Office for Mac 2011 licenses either. 
Replaces MS12-076.
Outlook for Mac

CVE-2013-0095
KB 2813682 No publicly known exploits Severity:Important
Exploitability:3
Less Urgent Less Urgent
MS13-027 3 similar problems exist with the windows USB drivers that allow privilege escalation to full administrative rights.  
USB Kernel Mode Drivers

CVE-2013-1285
CVE-2013-1286
CVE-2013-1287
KB 2807986 No publicly known exploits Severity:Important
Exploitability:1
Important Less Urgent
We will update issues on this page for about a week or so as they evolve.
We appreciate updates
US based customers can call Microsoft for free patch related support on 1-866-PCSAFETY
(*): ISC rating
  • We use 4 levels:
    • PATCH NOW: Typically used where we see immediate danger of exploitation. Typical environments will want to deploy these patches ASAP. Workarounds are typically not accepted by users or are not possible. This rating is often used when typical deployments make it vulnerable and exploits are being used or easy to obtain or make.
    • Critical: Anything that needs little to become "interesting" for the dark side. Best approach is to test and deploy ASAP. Workarounds can give more time to test.
    • Important: Things where more testing and other measures can help.
    • Less Urgent: Typically we expect the impact if left unpatched to be not that big a deal in the short term. Do not forget them however.
  • The difference between the client and server rating is based on how you use the affected machine. We take into account the typical client and server deployment in the usage of the machine and the common measures people typically have in place already. Measures we presume are simple best practices for servers such as not using outlook, MSIE, word etc. to do traditional office or leisure work.
  • The rating is not a risk analysis as such. It is a rating of importance of the vulnerability and the perceived or even predicted threat for affected systems. The rating does not account for the number of affected systems there are. It is for an affected system in a typical worst-case role.
  • Only the organization itself is in a position to do a full risk analysis involving the presence (or lack of) affected systems, the actually implemented measures, the impact on their operation and the value of the assets involved.
  • All patches released by a vendor are important enough to have a close look if you use the affected systems. There is little incentive for vendors to publicize patches that do not have some form of risk to them.

(**): The exploitability rating we show is the worst of them all due to the too large number of ratings Microsoft assigns to some of the patches.

--
Swa Frantzen -- Section 66

4 comment(s)

Comments

Also of possible interest is KB2775511 - Enterprise hotfix rollup (Windows 7 SP1 and Server 2008 R2 SP1). This rollup contains fixes released after SP1 and addresses the Windows Client Remote File System, SMB service, TCP protocol, Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) and processing of Group Policies.
Helped to resolve an unusual and puzzling network connectivity issue related to DirectAccess (kb2680464) and really slow logon due to poor GPO processing performance.
YMMV, as we're testing....
MS13-027 or KB2807986 is not getting installed by default via the 'Automatic Updates' mechanism in Win7 Pro x64 or WinXP Pro. I have confirmed this on multiple work machines and personal machines. An article discussing this 'plug in a thumb drive and own it, even if no user is logged in' vulnerability is up at Arstechnica.com . I have contacted the author, Dan Goodin, and he has promised to follow up with Microsoft to find out why this patch is not being installed by default. I have also contacted my CDW sales rep (volume liscensing customer) who has passed this information to Microsoft. If you have relied on Microsoft and their 'Automatic Updates' process during this patch cycle, they have failed you. Lets hope MS fixes this before some joker with a bag of thumb drives decides to embarrass them publicly.
@AnAdmin If you manually run WIndows Update, does it detect as vulnerable and then not install? Or does it not even detect it needs it?

I can verify that MS13-027 is detected as vulnerable and was patched using my Lumension patch server.
Manual Updates in WinXP were fine.

Manual Updates in Win7 x64 are still broken in that you must navigate to 'Important', check the box and choose to install.

I am copying from a reply to a responder at another site a few minutes ago. MS appears to be trying to fix this as WinXP on at least one machine is now installing via 'Automatic Updates'.

Copy of current state of patching:
I just logged into my WinXP Pro test box that was not picking up KB2807986 yesterday and was greeted with an 'updates are available' icon in the system tray.

KB2807986 was the only new patch listed since yesterday's patch install/reboot.

Status: WinXp Pro appears to be fixed. (I will verify on a second WinXP Pro machine in a few minutes.)



Win7 Pro x64...

A system that 'auto patched' last night did not install KB2807986.

A 2nd system that had been set to download and notify also did not receive KB2807986.

On both of these systems, despite reboots and choosing 'check for updates' via Control Panel>Windows Updates, the patch is still listed under 'important updates', is unchecked and does not get installed without user intervention.

Status: Win7 Pro x64 is still not flagged correctly for forcing this installation automatically.

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