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Sources say Microsoft on Tuesday will fix an extraordinarily scary flaw in all Windows versions, in a core cryptographic component that could be abused to spoof the source of digitally signed software. Apparently DoD & a few others got an advance patch krebsonsecurity.com/2020/01/crypti…
Maybe a coincidence, but today I received a heads up from the U.S. National Security Agency stating NSA’s Director of Cybersecurity is slated to host a call on Jan. 14 (Patch Tuesday) w/ news media that “will provide advanced notification of a current NSA cybersecurity issue.”
Not a coincidence. NSA says in their call with media this morning this vulnerability is one they reported to Microsoft.
NSA says they discovered the flaw on their own and that Microsoft will report that MS has seen no active exploitation of this vulnerability so far.
NSA's dir. of cybersecurity Anne Neuberger says the critical cryptographic vulnerability resides in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, and that the concern about this particular flaw is that it "makes trust vulnerable."
NSA: If enterprise-wide patching of this vuln not possible we recommend prioritize patching systems that perform TLS validation, or host critical infrastructure like domain controllers, DNS servers, VPN servers, etc.
This particular flaw is assigned as CVE-2020-0601. NSA says it exists in Win10 systems from July 2015 onward and Win Server 2016. My read on that is it's "critical" in those OSes, but may be present and less of a concern in older versions of Windows but we'll know more soon.
Sources say this disclosure from NSA is planned to be the first of many as part of a new initiative at NSA dubbed "Turn a New Leaf," aimed at making more of the agency's vulnerability research available to major software vendors and ultimately to the public.
The NSA's Neuberger said this wasn't the first vulnerability the agency has reported to Microsoft, but it was the first one for which they accepted credit/attribution when MS asked.
Microsoft has released an advisory for this vulnerability in Win10, Server 2016 and '19. It rated this as a "spoofing" flaw that is "important" in severity, but puts exploitability rating at 1, it's second most severe, i.e. "exploitation more likely." portal.msrc.microsoft.com/en-US/security…
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