0patch fixes ms-officecmd RCE vulnerability in Windows

Windows[German]The security team of ACROS Security around founder Mitja Kolsek has just developed a micro patch to close a remote code execution vulnerability in the ms-officecmd handler of Windows and released it for customers with a 0patch PRO or Enterprise license. There is no CVE for this vulnerability yet. Here is some information about it.


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The ms-officecmd RCE vulnerability

In the blog post Microsoft Teams Bugs: Blocks Emergency calls, unpatched phishing vulnerability since March 2021, I had reported in passing that Positive Security in Windows 10 had stumbled upon a code execution vulnerability in Windows 10 via IE11/Edge Legacy and MS Teams. It was a critical vulnerability in the handling of the "ms-officecmd" URL handler in Windows.

This vulnerability allowed a remote attacker to execute arbitrary code on the user's computer if the user visited a malicious web page with a browser or opened a link. The link could be exposed to the user in documents or messaging applications.

Positive Security has reported this flaw to Microsoft. Redmond reportedly fixed this vulnerability without assigning a CVE ID (because "changes to web pages, downloads through Defender or through the Store are not normally assigned a CVE ID in the same way").

The fix was not distributed via Windows Update but via the Microsoft Store. A prerequisite for the distribution was that the AppX Deployment Service was running. This service (AppXSVC) is activated by default in Windows 10 and is started on demand. However, a search for "AppXSVC activate" yields a few hits, so it's safe to assume that the service was often turned off (because it can cause high CPU usage). Also, in a typical corporate environment, there is no need to allow the Windows Store, so it is blocked via Group Policy. Mitja Kolsek has explained the details in more detail in this blog post.

The 0Patch solution for the ms-officecmd RCE vulnerability.

The team at ACROS Security, which has been providing the 0Patch solution for years, analyzed the RPE vulnerability and provided a micropatch to render the vulnerability harmless. Mitja Kolsek drew attention to this solution on Twitter.


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0Patch ms-officecmd RCE vulnerability

Details are described in more detail in this December 23, 2021 blog post from 0patch. The 0patch micropatches are available to customers with a 0patch PRO or Enterprise license. Notes on how the 0patch agent works, which loads the micropatches into memory at an application's runtime, can be found in the blog posts (such as here). 

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