Windows 10: 0patch fix for MSHTML vulnerability (CVE-2021-40444)

Windows[German]The vulnerability CVE-2021-40444 in the Windows MSHTML library has been known since September 7, 2021. Attackers try to attack Windows machines via this vulnerability using manipulated Office files. There are security updates from Microsoft, but not for older Windows versions. ACROS Security provides 0patch solutions to secure Windows against the MSHTML vulnerability (CVE-2021-40444).


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MSHTML vulnerability CVE-2021-40444

The MSHTML library included in Windows has vulnerability CVE-2021-40444, which allows remote code execution (RCE), including via manipulated Office documents. MSHTML (Trident) is the HTML rendering engine of Internet Explorer included in all previous versions of Windows. Some users believe that the systems are not vulnerable if Internet Explorer is not used. But mshtml.dll can be used by other programs as well. It is known that attackers have used manipulated Office documents to attack the vulnerability in the HTML rendering engine via ActiveX components downloaded from attacker's websites and reinstalled.

However, Microsoft's hints to mitigate the vulnerability, such as blocking the ability to install ActiveX, were not enough to fend off the attacks. The protected view in Microsoft Office can also be bypassed in attacks. Microsoft had to make several improvements to the proposed workarounds, but failed to eliminate the root of the problem. I had pointed out these problems in the article Disaster Windows MSHTML vulnerability CVE-2021-40444, hopefully a patch will come today and in other posts (see end of article). Then, in September 2021, Microsoft addressed the vulnerability in security updates (see Patch day recap Sept. 2021: Update on MSHTML vulnerability CVE-2021-40444). 

The 0Patch solution for CVE-2021-40444

The team at ACROS Security, which has been providing the 0Patch solution for years, has analyzed the MSHTML vulnerability CVE-2021-40444 and provided a micropatch to render the vulnerability harmless. Mitja Kolsek drew attention to this free solution via Twitter

0Patch for CVE-2021-40444

The details are described in more detail in this blog post from September 27, 2021 by 0patch. The 0patch micropatches are available for free for the following products: 


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  1. Windows 10 v1803 32bit or 64bit (updated with May 2021 Updates – latest before end of support)
  2. Windows 10 v1809 32bit or 64bit (updated with May 2021 Updates – latest before end of support)
  3. Windows 10 v1903 32bit or 64bit (updated with December 2020 Updates – latest before end of support)

Notes on how the 0patch agent works, which loads the micropatches into memory at the runtime of an application, can be found in the blog posts (such as here).

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