Vulnerabilities

Unit 42 Discovers 13 New Vulnerabilities Across Microsoft and Adobe Products

2 min read

Overview

Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 threat researchers have been credited with discovering six new vulnerabilities addressed by the Adobe Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as part of its December Adobe Security Bulletin APSB19-55 security updates. Additionally, seven new “important” rated vulnerabilities were addressed by the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) as part of its September, October and November 2019 security update releases.

Vulnerabilities

The Adobe vulnerabilities discovered included two “critical” and four “important” rated vulnerabilities, while the severity of the Microsoft vulnerabilities discovered were all rated “important”.

The Unit 42 researchers credited are Bo Qu, Zhibin Zhang, Qi Deng, Ken Hsu, Lexuan Sun, Hao Cai, Yue Guan, Haozhe Zhang, Hui Gao, Gal De Leon, Bar Lahav, Nadav Markus and Yaron Samuel. This is the first Microsoft and Adobe vulnerability discoveries credited to Ken Hsu, Lexuan Sun, Hao Cai, Yue Guan, Haozhe Zhang, Nadav Markus and Yaron Samuel.

The recently discovered exploits are listed in Table 1 below:

Vendor	CVE	Vulnerability Category	Impact	Maximum Severity Rating	Researcher(s)
Adobe	CVE-2019-16456	Out-of-Bounds Read	Information Disclosure	Important	Bo Qu
Adobe	CVE-2019-16457	Out-of-Bounds Read	Information Disclosure	Important	Zhibin Zhang
Adobe	CVE-2019-16458	Out-of-Bounds Read	Information Disclosure	Important	Qi Deng, Ken Hsu
Adobe	CVE-2019-16459	Use After Free	Arbitrary Code Execution	Critical	Lexuan Sun, Hao Cai
Adobe	CVE-2019-16464	Use After Free	Arbitrary Code Execution	Critical	Yue Guan, Haozhe Zhan
Adobe	CVE-2019-16465	Out-of-Bounds Read	Information Disclosure	Important	Hui Gao, Zhibin Zhang, Yue Guan
Microsoft	CVE-2019-1374	Windows Error Reporting Information Disclosure Vulnerability	Information Disclosure	Important	Gal De Leon
Microsoft	CVE-2019-1406	Jet Database Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Remote Code Execution	Important	Bar Lahav and Gal De Leon
Microsoft	CVE-2019-1417	Windows Data Sharing Service Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Elevation of Privilege	Important	Nadav Markus and Yaron Samuel
Microsoft	CVE-2019-1319	Windows Error Reporting Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Elevation of Privilege	Important	Gal De Leon
Microsoft	CVE-2019-1342	Windows Error Reporting Manager Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability	Elevation of Privilege	Important	Gal De Leon
Microsoft	CVE-2019-1241	Jet Database Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Remote Code Execution	Important	Bar Lahav and Gal De Leon
Microsoft	CVE-2019-1250	Jet Database Engine Remote Code Execution Vulnerability	Remote Code Execution	Important	Bar Lahav and Gal De Leon

Table 1. Critical and important vulnerabilities discovered in Adobe and Microsoft products

Conclusion

Palo Alto Networks customers using deploying our Next-Generation Firewalls with our best practices and a Threat Prevention Subscription are protected from zero-day vulnerabilities such as these. Weaponized exploits for these vulnerabilities are prevented by Traps’ multi-layered exploit prevention capabilities. Threat prevention capabilities such as vulnerability protection with IPS and WildFire provide our customers with comprehensive protection and automatic updates against previously unknown threats.

Palo Alto Networks is a regular contributor to vulnerability research in Microsoft, Adobe, Apple, Google Android, and other ecosystems, with more than 200 critical vulnerabilities discovered and regular talks at security conferences such as BlueHat and BlackHat.

By proactively identifying these vulnerabilities, developing protections for our customers, and sharing the information with the security community, we are removing weapons used by attackers to threaten users and compromise enterprise, government, and service provider networks.