Yesterday was Patch Tuesday. And, as usual, Microsoft has released its new security patches with which to correct all kinds of problems, bugs and vulnerabilities detected in its operating system, Windows, and other products. On this occasion, these security patches are especially important, and not only because of the large number of bugs they fix, but also because one of them, DogWalk, is being used to attack computers all over the world.
These new security patches are available for all versions of Windows that are still supported. Namely:
-
Windows 7. In its extended support mode, it has corrected 29 vulnerabilities, of which 9 have been critical and the rest important.
-
Windows 8.1. In total, this system has corrected 39 security flaws, of which 10 have been considered critical, and the rest important.
-
Windows 10. This system has fixed 58 vulnerabilities that affect users, of which 12 are critical and the rest important.
-
Windows 11. In total, this system has solved 54 security flaws, of which 13 were critically dangerous, and the others have been classified as important.
Windows Server editions, which are still supported, have also received their share of patches to protect users from potential hacks.
In total, these updates have covered 121 security flaws detected in the operating system. And all these failures were divided as follows:
- 64 elevation of privilege vulnerabilities.
- 6 security flaws that allow you to bypass security measures.
- 31 remote code execution failures.
- 12 vulnerabilities that allow revealing sensitive information in the system.
- 7 flaws used for denial of service attacks.
- 1 phishing bug.
These updates are now available to all users. We simply have to look for new patches through Windows Update, install them and, after restarting the PC, our computer will be protected from all these attacks. Especially from DogWalk, the most worrying.
This is how DogWalk works
DogWalk is a zero-day security flaw detected by Microsoft that has been used by hackers over the Internet for a long time. This security flaw also has a public exploit that circulates freely on the network, which allows anyone to take advantage of it to carry out different computer attacks.
Broadly speaking, this flaw is in the Windows Support Diagnostic Tool (MSDT) component of the operating system. By exploiting it, using the exploit, hackers can execute remote code on the affected system, being able to take control of it or infect it with another type of more dangerous malware. There are several ways to attack this component, although the most common is to configure an executable so that it runs automatically at Windows startup, or to open a .diagcab file, created especially for this purpose, on the victim’s computer.
It’s not the only zero-day bug that Microsoft has recently fixed. Without going any further, last month the company corrected a very serious vulnerability, called Follina, also used by hackers. And, in addition, these patches also correct a bug with a lot of potential for hackers, present in Microsoft Exchange, although this time it has not been exploited.
