Microsoft Patch Tuesday, February 2025 Version – Krebs on Safety

Microsoft at the moment issued safety updates to repair not less than 56 vulnerabilities in its Home windows working techniques and supported software program, together with two zero-day flaws which might be being actively exploited.

All supported Home windows working techniques will obtain an replace this month for a buffer overflow vulnerability that carries the catchy identify CVE-2025-21418. This patch must be a precedence for enterprises, as Microsoft says it’s being exploited, has low assault complexity, and no necessities for person interplay.

Tenable senior workers analysis engineer Satnam Narang famous that since 2022, there have been 9 elevation of privilege vulnerabilities on this identical Home windows part — three annually — together with one in 2024 that was exploited within the wild as a zero day (CVE-2024-38193).

“CVE-2024-38193 was exploited by the North Korean APT group generally known as Lazarus Group to implant a brand new model of the FudModule rootkit so as to preserve persistence and stealth on compromised techniques,” Narang stated. “At the moment, it’s unclear if CVE-2025-21418 was additionally exploited by Lazarus Group.”

The opposite zero-day, CVE-2025-21391, is an elevation of privilege vulnerability in Home windows Storage that may very well be used to delete recordsdata on a focused system. Microsoft’s advisory on this bug references one thing known as “CWE-59: Improper Hyperlink Decision Earlier than File Entry,” says no person interplay is required, and that the assault complexity is low.

Adam Barnett, lead software program engineer at Rapid7, stated though the advisory gives scant element, and even presents some obscure reassurance that ‘an attacker would solely have the ability to delete focused recordsdata on a system,’ it could be a mistake to imagine that the impression of deleting arbitrary recordsdata could be restricted to information loss or denial of service.

“As way back as 2022, ZDI researchers set out how a motivated attacker may parlay arbitrary file deletion into full SYSTEM entry utilizing strategies which additionally contain inventive misuse of symbolic hyperlinks,”Barnett wrote.

One vulnerability patched at the moment that was publicly disclosed earlier is CVE-2025-21377, one other weak point that might enable an attacker to raise their privileges on a susceptible Home windows system. Particularly, that is yet one more Home windows flaw that can be utilized to steal NTLMv2 hashes — basically permitting an attacker to authenticate because the focused person with out having to log in.

In response to Microsoft, minimal person interplay with a malicious file is required to take advantage of CVE-2025-21377, together with deciding on, inspecting or “performing an motion apart from opening or executing the file.”

“This trademark linguistic ducking and weaving could also be Microsoft’s approach of claiming ‘if we informed you any extra, we’d give the sport away,’” Barnett stated. “Accordingly, Microsoft assesses exploitation as extra probably.”

The SANS Internet Storm Center has a useful record of all of the Microsoft patches launched at the moment, listed by severity. Home windows enterprise directors would do effectively to control askwoody.com, which frequently has the inside track on any patches inflicting issues.

It’s getting tougher to purchase Home windows software program that isn’t additionally bundled with Microsoft’s flagship Copilot synthetic intelligence (AI) function. Final month Microsoft began bundling Copilot with Microsoft Workplace 365, which Redmond has since rebranded as “Microsoft 365 Copilot.” Ostensibly to offset the prices of its substantial AI investments, Microsoft additionally jacked up costs from 22 % to 30 % for upcoming license renewals and new subscribers.

Workplace-watch.com writes that current Workplace 365 customers who’re paying an annual cloud license do have the choice of “Microsoft 365 Traditional,” an AI-free subscription at a lower cost, however that many shoppers usually are not supplied the choice till they try to cancel their current Workplace subscription.

In different safety patch information, Apple has shipped iOS 18.3.1, which fixes a zero day vulnerability (CVE-2025-24200) that’s displaying up in assaults.

Adobe has issued safety updates that repair a complete of 45 vulnerabilities throughout InDesign, Commerce, Substance 3D Stager, InCopy, Illustrator, Substance 3D Designer and Photoshop Components.

Chris Goettl at Ivanti notes that Google Chrome is transport an replace at the moment which can set off updates for Chromium based mostly browsers together with Microsoft Edge, so be looking out for Chrome and Edge updates as we proceed by way of the week.