Threat Research

A November rain of patches from Microsoft

A collection of 57 CVEs for twelve product families is literally only half of the story this month

Microsoft on Tuesday released patches for 57 vulnerabilities, including 31 for Windows. Eleven other product groups are also affected. Of the 57 CVEs addressed, just 3 are considered Critical in severity; 2 of those are in Windows, while the third falls in Azure. One CVE, an Important-severity elevation-of-privilege issue (CVE-2023-36049), affects both .NET and Visual Studio; another Important-severity EoP affects .NET, Visual Studio, and also ASP.NET.

At press time, three Windows issues are known to be under exploit in the wild. (Or, depending on how you count these things, there are four, as we’ll discuss in the Notable November Updates section below.) An additional 10 vulnerabilities in Windows, Exchange, Office, and SharePoint are by the company’s estimation more likely to be exploited in the next 30 days, with the Office vulnerability (CVE-2023-36413, a security feature bypass) publicly disclosed already.

In addition to the 57 CVEs, Microsoft lists one official advisory, ADV990001, which covers their latest servicing stack updates. However, the list of information-only advisories is extensive this month. In addition to 21 CVEs affecting Edge/Chromium (six of those Edge-specific), there is information on an industry-wide issue affecting BlueTooth; an HTTP/2-related issue, currently under active exploit in the wild, touching Windows, ASP.NET, .NET and Visual Studio; five CBL-Mariner-related issued covered by CVEs from Kubernetes, Red Hat, and MITRE; 17 Adobe-issued patches for Acrobat Reader, and seven more patches from Adobe for ColdFusion.

We don’t include these 53 issues in the CVE counts and graphics below, but we’ll provide information on everything in an appendix at the end of the article. We are as usual including at the end of this post three appendices listing all Microsoft’s patches, sorted by severity, by predicted exploitability, and by product family.

In addition to all of this, Windows Server 2022, 23H2 Edition (Server Core installation) is released as part of this update.

By the numbers

  • Total Microsoft CVEs: 57
  • Total Microsoft advisories shipping in update: 1
  • Total other advisory issues covered in update: 52
  • Publicly disclosed: 3
  • Exploited: 3 plus one in non-Microsoft advisory issue
  • Severity
    • Critical: 3
    • Important: 54
  • Impact
    • Elevation of Privilege: 17
    • Remote Code Execution: 16
    • Spoofing: 9
    • Information Disclosure: 6
    • Security Feature Bypass: 5
    • Denial of Service: 4

A bar chart showing the impact and severity of November 2023's patches; the same information is given in the text

Figure 1: This month elevation of privilege issues were slightly more prevalent than remote code execution for a change; spoofing also makes a strong showing

Products

  • Windows: 31
  • Dynamics 365: 5
  • Exchange: 4
  • Office: 4
  • Visual Studio: 4, including one shared with .NET and one shared with ASP.NET and .NET
  • ASP.NET: 3, including one shared with .NET and Visual Studio
  • Azure: 3
  • .NET: 2 (one shared with Visual Studio and one shared with ASP.NET and Visual Studio)
  • Defender: 1
  • Host Integration Server: 1
  • On-Premises Data Gateway: 1
  • SharePoint: 1

A bar chart showing the products affected by November 2023's patches; the same information is given in the text

Figure 2: Windows as usual takes the lion’s share of patches in November, but there’s a fairly wide variety of more specialized products affected. (In the case of patches touching more than one product, each instance is represented in this chart; for instance, CVE-2023-36049, which affects both Visual Studio and .NET, is counted once for each of the two)

Notable November updates

In addition to the issues discussed above, a few interesting items present themselves.

CVE-2023-36025 — Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

There are three Windows CVEs this month for which active exploitation has been detected in the wild. (Or four; more on that in a minute.) This one, an Important-class security feature bypass, has the highest CVSS base and temporal scores (Base 8.8 / Temporal 8.2) of the trio. All it takes is a malicious URL, and the attacker is able to bypass Windows Defender SmartScreen checks and the prompts the user would expect to see with those.

CVE-2023-36397 — Windows Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

Is message queuing enabled on your system? This vulnerability, which can be triggered by an attacker sending a maliciously crafted file over the network, is critical-severity (CVSS 3.1 9.8/8.5) and can lead to RCE. In addition to the other protections released for this, Microsoft notes that users can check their exposure by checking to see if the service called Message Queuing is running, and if TCP port 1801 is in listening mode.

CVE-2020-8554, CVE-2023-46753, CVE-2023-46316, CVE-2020-14343, CVE-2020-1747 (5 CVEs)

These five CVEs are not part of Microsoft’s official release, but no one using Microsoft’s CBL-Mariner (Common Base Linux Mariner) should sleep on them. CBL-Mariner is Microsoft’s own Linux distro; first developed in-house for internal development and Azure management. The distro was quietly made publicly available to the public last year. None of the three CVEs are directly from Microsoft, but from Kubernetes (CVE-2020-8554), Red Hat (CVE-2020-14343, CVE-2020-1747), and MITRE (CVE-2023-46316, CVE-2023-46753). Due to the apparent age of several of these CVEs and their severity – three of the five have a CVSS base score of 9.8 out of 10 – users are encouraged to keep themselves up to date.

CVE-2023-24023 — MITRE: CVE-2023-24023 Bluetooth Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-44487 — MITRE: CVE-2023-44487 HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack

Speaking of MITRE, the organization features in two more CVEs about which Microsoft is publishing information. As one would expect, the MITRE CVEs are applicable for many companies, not only Microsoft. CVE-2023-24023 covers an important-severity spoofing vulnerability reported to BlueTooth’s governing body. As for CVE-2023-44487, this CVE makes an unusual repeat appearance on the Patch Tuesday roster; readers may remember that we discussed this Rapid Reset issue in last month’s roundup. It affects Windows, ASP.NET, .NET, and Visual Studio.

A bar chart showing the cumulative totals of Microsoft's 2023 patches

Figure 3: With one month to go in 2023, the tally of remote code execution patches releases reaches 300. Meanwhile, it’s barely visible, but the year’s first critical-level information-disclosure issue shows on the chart

Sophos protections

CVE Sophos Intercept X/Endpoint IPS Sophos XGS Firewall
CVE-2023-36033 Exp/2336033-A Exp/2336033-A
CVE-2023-36036 Exp/2336036-A Exp/2336036-A
CVE-2023-36394 Exp/2336394 Exp/2336394
CVE-2023-36399 Exp/2336399-A Exp/2336399-A
CVE-2023-36413 sid:2309050 sid:2309050
CVE-2023-36424 Exp/2336424-A Exp/2336424-A

 

As you can every month, if you don’t want to wait for your system to pull down Microsoft’s updates itself, you can download them manually from the Windows Update Catalog website. Run the winver.exe tool to determine which build of Windows 10 or 11 you’re running, then download the Cumulative Update package for your specific system’s architecture and build number.

Appendix A: Vulnerability Impact and Severity

This is a list of November’s patches sorted by impact, then sub-sorted by severity. Each list is further arranged by CVE.

Elevation of Privilege (17 CVEs)

Critical severity
CVE-2023-36400 Windows HMAC Key Derivation Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
Important severity
CVE-2023-36033 Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36036 Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36047 Windows Authentication Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36049 .NET, .NET Framework, and Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36394 Windows Search Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36399 Windows Storage Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36403 Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36405 Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36407 Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36408 Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36422 Microsoft Windows Defender Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36424 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36427 Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36558 ASP.NET Core – Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36705 Windows Installer Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36719 Microsoft Speech Application Programming Interface (SAPI) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

 

Remote Code Execution (16 CVEs)

Critical severity
CVE-2023-36397 Windows Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
Important severity
CVE-2023-36017 Windows Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36028 Microsoft Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36041 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36042 Visual Studio Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36045 Microsoft Office Graphics Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36393 Windows User Interface Application Core Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36396 Windows Compressed Folder Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36401 Microsoft Remote Registry Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36402 Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36423 Microsoft Remote Registry Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36425 Windows Distributed File System (DFS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36437 Azure DevOps Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36439 Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-38151 Microsoft Host Integration Server 2020 Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-38177 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

 

Spoofing (9 CVEs)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36007 Microsoft Send Customer Voice survey from Dynamics 365 Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36016 Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) Cross-site Scripting Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36018 Visual Studio Code Jupyter Extension Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36030 Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36031 Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) Cross-site Scripting Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36035 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36039 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36050 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36410 Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) Cross-site Scripting Vulnerability

 

Information Disclosure (6 CVEs)

Critical severity
CVE-2023-36052 Azure CLI REST Command Information Disclosure Vulnerability
Important severity
CVE-2023-36043 Open Management Infrastructure Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36398 Windows NTFS Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36404 Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36406 Windows Hyper-V Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36428 Microsoft Local Security Authority Subsystem Service Information Disclosure Vulnerability

 

Security Feature Bypass (5 CVEs)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36021 Microsoft Host Integration Server 2020 Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36025 Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36037 Microsoft Excel Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36413 Microsoft Office Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36560 ASP.NET Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

 

Denial of Service (4 CVE)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36038 ASP.NET Core Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36046 Windows Authentication Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36392 DHCP Server Service Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36395 Windows Deployment Services Denial of Service Vulnerability

 

 

Appendix B: Exploitability

This is a list of the November CVEs judged by Microsoft to be more likely to be exploited in the wild within the first 30 days post-release, as well as those already known to be under exploit. Each list is further arranged by CVE.

Exploitation detected
CVE-2023-36025 Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36033 Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36036 Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
Exploitation more likely within 30 days
CVE-2023-36017 Windows Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36035 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36039 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36050 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36394 Windows Search Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36399 Windows Storage Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36413 Microsoft Office Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36424 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36439 Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-38177 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

 

 

Appendix C: Products Affected

This is a list of November’s patches sorted by product family, then sub-sorted by severity. Each list is further arranged by CVE. Patches that are shared among multiple product families are listed multiple times, once for each product family.

Windows (29 CVEs)

Critical severity
CVE-2023-36397 Windows Pragmatic General Multicast (PGM) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36400 Windows HMAC Key Derivation Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
Important severity
CVE-2023-36017 Windows Scripting Engine Memory Corruption Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36025 Windows SmartScreen Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36028 Microsoft Protected Extensible Authentication Protocol (PEAP) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36033 Windows DWM Core Library Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36036 Windows Cloud Files Mini Filter Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36046 Windows Authentication Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36047 Windows Authentication Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36392 DHCP Server Service Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36393 Windows User Interface Application Core Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36394 Windows Search Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36395 Windows Deployment Services Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36396 Windows Compressed Folder Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36398 Windows NTFS Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36399 Windows Storage Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36401 Microsoft Remote Registry Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36402 Microsoft WDAC OLE DB provider for SQL Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36403 Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36404 Windows Kernel Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36405 Windows Kernel Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36406 Windows Hyper-V Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36407 Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36408 Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36423 Microsoft Remote Registry Service Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36424 Windows Common Log File System Driver Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36425 Windows Distributed File System (DFS) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36427 Windows Hyper-V Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36428 Microsoft Local Security Authority Subsystem Service Information Disclosure Vulnerability

 

Dynamics 365 (5 CVEs)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36007 Microsoft Send Customer Voice survey from Dynamics 365 Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36016 Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) Cross-site Scripting Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36030 Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36031 Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) Cross-site Scripting Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36410 Microsoft Dynamics 365 (on-premises) Cross-site Scripting Vulnerability

 

Exchange (4 CVEs)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36035 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36039 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36050 Microsoft Exchange Server Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36439 Microsoft Exchange Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

 

Office (4 CVEs)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36037 Microsoft Excel Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36041 Microsoft Excel Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36045 Microsoft Office Graphics Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36413 Microsoft Office Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

 

Visual Studio (4 CVEs)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36018 Visual Studio Code Jupyter Extension Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36042 Visual Studio Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36049 .NET, .NET Framework, and Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36558 ASP.NET Core – Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

 

ASP.NET (3 CVEs)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36038 ASP.NET Core Denial of Service Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36560 ASP.NET Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36558 ASP.NET Core – Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

 

Azure (3 CVEs)

Critical severity
CVE-2023-36052 Azure CLI REST Command Information Disclosure Vulnerability
Important severity
CVE-2023-36043 Open Management Infrastructure Information Disclosure Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36437 Azure DevOps Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

 

.NET (2 CVEs)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36049 .NET, .NET Framework, and Visual Studio Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36558 ASP.NET Core – Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

 

Defender (1 CVE)

Critical severity
CVE-2023-36422 Microsoft Windows Defender Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability

 

Host Integration Server (1 CVE)

Important severity
CVE-2023-38151 Microsoft Host Integration Server 2020 Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

 

On-Premises Data Gateway (1 CVE)

Important severity
CVE-2023-36021 Microsoft Host Integration Server 2020 Security Feature Bypass Vulnerability

 

SharePoint (1 CVE)

Important severity
CVE-2023-38177 Microsoft SharePoint Server Remote Code Execution Vulnerability

 

 

Appendix D: Other Products

This is a list of advisories and information on other relevant CVEs in the November Microsoft release, sorted by product.

Microsoft Servicing Stack Updates

ADV990001 Latest Servicing Stack Updates

Adobe Acrobat Reader Bulletin APSB23-54: Security updates available for Acrobat Reader (17 CVEs)

CVE-2023-44336 Use After Free (CWE-416)
CVE-2023-44337 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44338 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44339 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44340 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44348 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44356 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44357 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44358 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44359 Use After Free (CWE-416)
CVE-2023-44360 Out-of-bounds Read (CWE-125)
CVE-2023-44361 Use After Free (CWE-416)
CVE-2023-44365 Access of Uninitialized Pointer (CWE-824)
CVE-2023-44366 Out-of-bounds Write (CWE-787)
CVE-2023-44367 Use After Free (CWE-416)
CVE-2023-44371 Use After Free (CWE-416)
CVE-2023-44372 Use After Free (CWE-416)

 

Adobe ColdFusion Bulletin APSB23-52: Security updates available for Adobe ColdFusion (7 CVEs)

CVE-2023-44347 Improper Access Control (CWE-284)
CVE-2023-44350 Deserialization of Untrusted Data (CWE-502)
CVE-2023-44351 Deserialization of Untrusted Data (CWE-502)
CVE-2023-44352 Cross-site Scripting (Reflected XSS) (CWE-79)
CVE-2023-44353 Deserialization of Untrusted Data (CWE-502)
CVE-2023-44354 Improper Authentication (CWE-287)
CVE-2023-44355 Improper Input Validation (CWE-20)

 

Relevant MITRE releases (2 CVEs)

CVE-2023-24023 MITRE: CVE-2023-24023 Bluetooth Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-44487 MITRE: CVE-2023-44487 HTTP/2 Rapid Reset Attack

 

Relevant to CBL-Mariner (5 CVEs)

CVE-2020-8554 Kubernetes man in the middle using LoadBalancer or ExternalIPs
CVE-2023-46753 [FRRouting issue; no title provided]
CVE-2023-46316 [traceroute issue; no title provided]
CVE-2020-14343 [PyYAML library issue; no title provided]
CVE-2020-1747 [PyYAML library issue; no title provided]

 

Relevant to Edge / Chromium (21 CVEs)

CVE-2023-36014 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36022 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36024 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36027 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36029 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Spoofing Vulnerability
CVE-2023-36034 Microsoft Edge (Chromium-based) Remote Code Execution Vulnerability
CVE-2023-5346 Chromium: CVE-2023-5346 Type Confusion in V8
CVE-2023-5480 Chromium: CVE-2023-5480 Inappropriate implementation in Payments
CVE-2023-5482 Chromium: CVE-2023-5482 Insufficient data validation in USB
CVE-2023-5849 Chromium: CVE-2023-5849 Integer overflow in USB
CVE-2023-5850 Chromium: CVE-2023-5850 Incorrect security UI in Downloads
CVE-2023-5851 Chromium: CVE-2023-5851 Inappropriate implementation in Downloads
CVE-2023-5852 Chromium: CVE-2023-5852 Use after free in Printing
CVE-2023-5853 Chromium: CVE-2023-5853 Incorrect security UI in Downloads
CVE-2023-5854 Chromium: CVE-2023-5854 Use after free in Profiles
CVE-2023-5855 Chromium: CVE-2023-5855 Use after free in Reading Mode
CVE-2023-5856 Chromium: CVE-2023-5856 Use after free in Side Panel
CVE-2023-5857 Chromium: CVE-2023-5857 Inappropriate implementation in Downloads
CVE-2023-5858 Chromium: CVE-2023-5858 Inappropriate implementation in WebApp Provider
CVE-2023-5859 Chromium: CVE-2023-5859 Incorrect security UI in Picture In Picture
CVE-2023-5996 Chromium: CVE-2023-5996 Use after free in WebAudio