Patching in Review – Week 4 of 2019

While we are still weeks away from the next patch Tuesday, Apple has kept us busy this week with a series of security releases for its software catalog.

A new ransomware campaign has been discovered by security researchers that’s being delivered through spam emails. This attack, titled “GandCrab Ransomware,” is detailed by BleepingComputer where an attached Word document titled “Emergencyexitmap.doc” can be opened. Once the user enables macros, a PowerShell script will be executed that downloads and installs the ransomware on the system. Older, unsupported versions of Microsoft Office are especially vulnerable to this attack and many antivirus programs do not detect these malicious scripts, so make sure to educate your end users around these attacks that require user interaction.

Security Releases

Apple released new updates for both iCloud and iTunes for Windows on its Security Updates page, patching a total of 14 CVEs. Three of the CVEs released affect SQLite with a critical CVSSv3 score of 9.8, where an attacker can execute arbitrary code through a memory corruption issue and are shared by both iCloud and iTunes. While not as ubiquitous as Adobe Flash or Google Chrome, this software can still be an attack vector on a subset of your systems, so make sure to roll out these updates soon.

Third-Party Updates

While only Apple released security updates this week, many other vendors released non-security updates for their products. These might not cover any CVEs, but they also contain valuable stability fixes.