Microsoft discovered another vulnerability in Windows Print Spooler, and until a security update arrives, the only way to defend against the flaw leaves Windows PCs unable to print documents.
“An elevation of privilege vulnerability exists when the Windows Print Spooler service improperly performs privileged file operations,” the company said. “An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could run arbitrary code with SYSTEM privileges. An attacker could then install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights.”
This is the third vulnerability related to Windows Print Spooler discovered in recent weeks. The first, CVE-2021-1675, was addressed in a June 8 security update to Windows 10. The second was called PrintNightmare, and it affects every version of Windows despite the release of an emergency patch on July 6 that was supposed to at least partially address the security flaw.
Microsoft hasn’t revealed what versions of Windows are affected by this new vulnerability, to which it assigned the identifier CVE-2021-34481, but it’s “under investigation.” The company also confirmed that it’s working on a security update to address the issue. Until that update is released, the only defense against this vulnerability is to disable Windows Print Spooler.
There is some good news: Microsoft said that attackers can only exploit CVE-2021-34481 if they already “have the ability to execute code on a victim system.” The company also said that it isn’t aware of any efforts to exploit the vulnerability, but that’s likely to change following this disclosure, and it doesn’t necessarily mean attackers weren’t aware of the flaw before.
Microsoft provided instructions for disabling Windows Print Spooler in the security update related to CVE-2021-34481. Now it’s up to Windows users to decide if they’d rather defend their PCs against the vulnerability, which is relatively difficult to exploit, or be able to print documents.
