Ladies and gentlemen, I welcome you to embrace the new generation PC’s. The software giant uncovered and fixed 79 vulnerabilities in Windows but five of those bug fixes applied to the operating system some of which have been actively exploited by hackers.
Flaws are a varied subject and a variety of them is fixed.
This is according to BleepingComputer, and out of these seven flaws, all of which are severe. One can use such bugs to execute code on the target machine or even gain higher privilege. Of the rest, all but one are accounted as significant.
Patched vulnerabilities include:
Thirty: elevation of privilege.
4 security features which can be bypassed
23 Remote Code Execution Bugs
11 Information Disclosure Flaws
8 Denial of Services
3 Spoofing Vulnerabilities
Four of the vulnerabilities highlighted in the hackers’ attack.
Of these flaws, four have been exploited to their maximum by hackers. Out of which one has become public already while we are coming across the existence of the other three only at this point of time.
The first one, with the identification number CVE-2024-38014 is an elevation of privilege vulnerability found in the Windows installer. It can be used by hackers to gain the privileges on the affected PCs with weak defense systems in place. The second, CVE-2024-38217, is an escape that defangs an antiphishing component in Windows referred to as the “Mark of the Web.” It was disclosed publicly in the last month but, researchers found that hackers have been using it since 2018.
The third is CVE-2024-38226, is a Microsoft Publisher security feature bypass vulnerability; the last is a Windows Update remote code execution vulnerability CVE-2024-43491.
How to protect yourself?
The first and by far the most straightforward precaution that you can take to shield your Windows computer from these incursions is to apply the newest update the moment they are released. Other measures include, the use of efficient antivirus and being on the lookout on emails or websites that may contain viruses.
Bear in mind that updating your PCs is something which you should do regularly bearing in mind that Microsoft release patches every second week of the month. Indeed, the adage that ‘prevention is better than cure’ can be applied to this particular situation.