As part of its March 2022 security updates, Microsoft on Tuesday patched a class spoofing vulnerability in Defender for Endpoint and warned of its impact on all platforms.
More than 70 vulnerabilities were addressed with this month’s set of patches, including three issues for which exploit code is publicly available – all three are remote code execution bugs.
While the Defender for Endpoint flaw is not among them, Microsoft published guidance on it, warning that threat actors always seek means to tamper with security protections and render victim systems defenseless.
“Microsoft continuously works to defeat these methods to help our customers protect their environment and gain visibility when attacks occur, both through our own research and in partnership with the security community,” the tech giant says.
[ READ: Patch Tuesday: Microsoft Fixes Multiple Code Execution Flaws ]
Tracked as CVE-2022-23278, the vulnerability is rated medium severity (CVSS score of 5.9), but Microsoft says it is an “important class spoofing” issue.
The patches Microsoft released on Tuesday are now rolling out to all systems on which automatic updates have been enabled, meaning that no user action is needed.
“On Windows, this is part of the March Cumulative Update for Windows so if automatic updates are scheduled, no further action is necessary. For those who do not have automatic updates turned on, we recommend doing so,” Microsoft notes.
The software giant says it is not currently aware of cyberattacks exploiting the security hole, but has released detections to help organizations identify possible exploit activity.
According to the company, device spoofing or misconfigured devices may cause suspicious client communication and organizations should monitor their environments for them.
Customers are advised to apply Microsoft’s latest security updates as soon as possible.
Related: Microsoft Teams Abused for Malware Distribution in Recent Attacks
Related: Microsoft Patches for 51 Windows Security Defects
Related: Microsoft Edge Adds Security Mode to Thwart Malware Attacks

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