Microsoft Updates to Meltdown (CVE-2017-5754) appears to have inadvertently left users running Windows 7 64-bit systems exposed. These systems are said to be much more vulnerable than they were before information, according a researcher.
Let's remind that Meltdown is a hardware vulnerability that proved almost simultaneously by several groups of researchers.
Η ευπάθεια επιτρέπει σε ένα εισβολέα να έχει πρόσβαση στα περιεχόμενα της μνήμης του πυρήνα (kernel memory) σε passwords και encryption keys that is, from a place used by common applications.
So Microsoft and many other companies tried to fix the vulnerability by updating operating systems (except for BIOS updates from manufacturers). So we saw two different updates for Windows in January and February.
But according to Ulf Frisk, something went wrong right from the first update released in January, when it was installed on systems with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. The update skipped some control permissions for something called Page Map Level 4 (PML4).
What is this;
It is a table used by Intel microprocessors to translate the virtual addresses of a process into physical memory addresses in RAM.
However, only the kernel must have access to this table. Because if things do not happen, they are very simple for every attacker.
No clever exploits will be needed, since Windows 7 does all the hard work of mapping the required memory to each running process. The exploit is just a matter of reading and enrollments to an already mapped virtual memory in operation. No complicated APIs or syscalls required.
According to Frisk, the update was released on March Microsoft has fixed the problem on Windows 10, 8, and 7 32bit. This means that Windows 7 x64 systems that receive only the January and / or February updates are still affected.
Seeing systems more vulnerable (than before) after a security update is something we do not often see.
First there was an update on the flaw, which created a new and distinct defect, which required a new solution for repair.
But to be fair, Microsoft may have written the buggy code, but it was trying to cover completely security flaws that originated in the way hardware was designed two decades ago.
Following the above, we must once again emphasize the importance of immediately implementing any new updates.
Ok with Microsoft it's best to wait a few days, especially on systems partreatments.
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