MS13-079 Vulnerability in Active Directory could allow denial of service (Important)

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Earlier this week, during the September 2013 Patch Tuesday, Microsoft has released a new Active Directory-related security bulletin: MS13-079.

With the third Active Directory-related Security bulletin this year, (after MS13-066 and MS13-032) Microsoft is sure having its hands full on patching the vulnerabilities found in these technologies.

 

About MS13-079

This security update resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Active Directory. The vulnerability could allow denial of service if an attacker sends a specially crafted query to the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) service. This issue was privately reported to Microsoft and documented as CVE-2013-3868.

Affected Operating Systems

This security update is rated Important for Active Directory, Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS), and Active Directory Services on the following, currently supported, Windows Server Operating Systems:

  • Active Directory Domain Services on Windows Server 2008 SP2 x86
  • Active Directory Domain Services on Windows Server 2008 SP2 x64
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services on Windows Server 2008 SP2 x86
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services on Windows Server 2008 SP2 x64
  • Active Directory Domain Services on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1
  • Active Directory Domain Services on Windows Server 2012
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services on Windows Server 2012

Note:
The update also applies to Server Core installations of the above Windows Server Operating Systems

This security update is also applicable to the following client Windows Operating Systems:

  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS) on Windows Vista SP2 x86
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS) on Windows Vista SP2 x64
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS) on Windows 7 SP1 x86
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS) on Windows 7 SP1 x64
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS) on Windows 8 x86
  • Active Directory Lightweight Directory Service (AD LDS) on Windows 8 x64

The security update addresses the vulnerability by correcting how the LDAP service handles this type of specially crafted LDAP queries.

 

Guidance

You are urged to test and implement the update corresponding to the Security Bulletin on the affected Operating Systems running the aforementioned Active Directory services.

Due to recent quality issues with Microsoft patches, please confirm the availability of services depending on Active Directory in a test environment with the update installed, before you implement this update in a production environment.

Related Posts

MS13-066 Vulnerability in Active Directory Federation Services Could Allow … (Important)
MS13-032 Vulnerability in Active Directory Could Allow Remote Code Execution (Important) Statistics on Active Directory-related Security Bulletins

Further reading

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS13-079 – Important
MS13-079: Vulnerability in Active Directory could allow denial of service: Sep 10, 2013
Vulnerability Summary for CVE-2013-3868

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