It is February and already we have seen some excitement so far this year. Between Microsoft dissolving the ANS (Advanced Notification Service), to Google’s Project Zero team rigidly adhering to their 90-day disclosure policy (disclosing a Windows vulnerability days before the January Bulletin released, not to mention the disclosure of three high severity Apple vulnerabilities in late January), and a series of Flash Zero Day’s that were discovered in the wild and quickly turned around by Adobe. My take on each of these:

  • Microsoft ANS – I’m not a fan of dissolving this program. Not all companies may have used this to their full advantage, but customers of ours relied on the ANS to give them a couple of day jumpstart on prepping for their monthly maintenance. If Microsoft introduces patches to a product that has never been updated prior to the patch cycle, admins will need time to prep test machines. Now they will be condensing that time along with change control processes into a tighter window.
  • Google Project Zero disclosures – Anyone who has read my blogs or commentary before knows that I am a proponent for vendors being responsible about disclosures, but after a resolution is in place. Yes the time to resolution is important, and for vendors who are negligent I fully agree with the Google stance. By Chris Betz’s comments in a blog post just after Google’s disclosure of the Windows OS vulnerability, they had communicated to Google, prior to the 90-day date, that the update was coming just a couple of days later. What purpose did this disclosure serve other than to stir up a lively debate?
  • Flash Zero Day’s – I do not envy the Adobe Security Team so far this year. Browsers, browser plug-ins and media players are prime targets for hackers. They are on practically every device we use, so naturally they will become a target. I do think that the turnaround from discovery to resolution on these three instances was very fast and applaud the Adobe team for ensuring the resolutions were delivered quickly.

For February Patch Tuesday the non-Microsoft updates are going to be light this month. With three Zero Day’s in a row, Flash Player has had a number of updates pushed recently. Companies that have not pushed the most recent Flash Player updates should do so immediately. Since January there have been three Flash Player updates to cover a series of Zero Day’s discovered in the wild. The most recent update on Feb. 5 also included 17 other vulnerability fixes. The expectation is that we will not be seeing a Flash Player update this Patch Tuesday, but you definitely have updates to push if you have not done so since January.

With the series of Flash Player updates, you will also need to push the latest IE Advisory 3021953 to update the Flash Plug-in, otherwise you have not fully plugged the three Zero Day’s and additional vulnerabilities from the Flash releases.

Google Chrome also released prior to patch Tuesday to accommodate the urgent Flash Player updates. The latest Chrome update resolves the Feb. 5 Flash Player plug-in update along with 11 security fixes. This should be another high priority update for you this month. Google has announced a Beta Channel Update for Chrome, which usually indicates a release is not far off. I would expect it to be a feature release since Google updated so many security fixes on Feb. 5.

Mozilla Firefox released an update last week including 10 security vulnerabilities. Four of these are Critical. This should be among your top priorities this month to get updated.

On the Microsoft front we will see a fairly average-sized Patch Tuesday. Three Critical and six Important updates have been released. The impact this month includes the operating system, Internet Explorer, Office, SharePoint and System Center Virtual Machine Manager.

Internet Explorer is a critical update this month. Having not pushed an update in January, it is not surprise that there are 41 vulnerabilities being resolved in this Security Rollup. Definitely a Priority 1 this month. One of these has been publicly disclosed.

There are two Critical updates for the Windows Operating System updates this month. The first is a Critical Kernel Mode Driver update this month, so test diligently lest you blow up the brains of the machine. Then we have a Critical update group policy that could allow remote code execution. The VMM update applies to both server and client installs. If you have the admin console installed on the VMM server you should update the VMM server patch first, then the administrator console patch.

There are no Critical updates for Office this month, but there are multiple Important updates including a SharePoint update. The thing about SharePoint updates is the lack of rollback. Test adequately, especially if you have a lot of SharePoint plug-ins. If you have not already done so, you should look into virtualizing your SharePoint servers. The ability to snapshot the VM prior to updating will allow you to rollback even if the patch does not support it. If you are running VMware vSphere and Shavlik Protect, you can take advantage of our snapshot feature to do a pre-deploy snapshot automatically during the patch process.

Here is a bulletin-by-bulletin summary of the updates you should be planning for this February (first three released prior to Patch Tuesday):

APSB15-04: Security updates available for Adobe Flash Player
Vendor Severity: Priority 1
Shavlik Priority: Priority 1 – Should be pushed out as soon as possible
Vulnerability Count: 18 (+2 more if you have not pushed APSB15-03 yet)
Impact: 1 Zero Day currently being exploited in the wild (+2 more if you did not push -03), use-after-free, memory corruption, type confusion, heap buffer overflow, buffer overflow, and null pointer vulnerabilities.

Chrome 40.0.2214.111 : Stable Channel Update
Vendor Severity: High
Shavlik Priority: Priority 1 – Should be pushed out as soon as possible
Vulnerability Count: 11 (Also includes support for latest Flash plug-in)
Impact: 3 Highs resolving use-after-free, cross-origin-bypass, and privilege escalation

Firefox: 34 and 35 updates
Vendor Severity: Critical
Shavlik Priority: Priority 1 - Should be pushed out as soon as possible
Vulnerability Count: 10
Impact: 4 critical updates resolving sandbox escape, read-after-free, memory safety, and update to the OpenH254 plug-in.  Also includes uninitialized memory use, origin header, memory use, wrapper bypass and other vulnerability fixes.

MS15-009: Security Update for Internet Explorer (3034682)
Vendor Severity: Critical
Shavlik Priority: Priority 1 – Should be pushed out as soon as possible
Vulnerability Count: 41 (1 is publicly disclosed)
Impact: Remote Code Execution, Security Feature Bypass

MS15-010: Vulnerabilities in Windows Kernel-Mode Driver Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3036220)
Vendor Severity: Critical
Shavlik Priority: Priority 1 – Should be pushed out as soon as possible
Vulnerability Count: 6 (1 is publicly disclosed)
Impact: Elevation of privilege, Security feature bypass,

MS15-011: Vulnerability in Group Policy Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3000483)
Vendor Severity: Critical
Shavlik Priority: Priority 1 - Should be pushed out as soon as possible
Vulnerability Count: 1
Impact: Remote code execution

MS15-012: Vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office Could Allow Remote Code Execution (3032328)
Vendor Severity: Important
Shavlik Priority: Priority 2 - Should be pushed within 10 days
Vulnerability Count: 3
Impact: Remote Code Execution

MS15-013: Vulnerability in Microsoft Office Could Allow Security Feature Bypass (3033857)
Vendor Severity: Important
Shavlik Priority: Priority 2 - Should be pushed within 10 days
Vulnerability Count: 1 (publicly disclosed)
Impact: Security Feature Bypass

MS15-014: Vulnerability in Group Policy Could Allow Security Feature Bypass (3004361)
Vendor Severity: Important
Shavlik Priority: Priority 2 - Should be pushed within 10 days
Vulnerability Count: 1
Impact: Security Feature Bypass

MS15-015: Vulnerability in Microsoft Windows Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3031432)
Vendor Severity: Important
Shavlik Priority: Priority 2 - Should be pushed within 10 days
Vulnerability Count: 1
Impact: Elevation of Privilege

MS15-016: Vulnerability in Microsoft Graphics Component Could Allow Information Disclosure (3029944)
Vendor Severity: Important
Shavlik Priority: Priority 2 - Should be pushed within 10 days
Vulnerability Count: 1
Impact: Information Disclosure

MS15-017: Vulnerability in Virtual Machine Manager Could Allow Elevation of Privilege (3035898)
Vendor Severity: Important
Shavlik Priority: Priority 2 - Should be pushed within 10 days
Vulnerability Count: 1
Impact: Elevation of Privilege

Join us tomorrow on our monthly Patch Tuesday webinar as we discuss the priorities and pitfalls you will want to watch out for.