Microsoft is now less than five months away from cutting off support to Windows XP, but before that happens the company is still issuing new security alerts for the OS. The latest such advisory was issued earlier today and also affects Windows Server 2003.
Microsoft"s Security Response Center blog has the details on the advisory, which is due to a local privilege escalation exploit that was first discovered by the FireEye research firm. FireEye states, "The vulnerability cannot be used for remote code execution but could allow a standard user account to execute code in the kernel."
Microsoft says that Windows XP and Server 2003 users must open a malicious PDF file to be affected by this new exploit. While Microsoft is working on a full patch that will permanently close this hole, it does recommend that users delete their NDProxy.sys file and reroute to Null.sys. The company has determined that this will be an effective workaround until a patch is released.
The blog adds, "We hope this doesn’t disrupt any holiday plans you may have, but we did want to provide you with actionable information to help protect your systems. We continue to monitor the threat landscape closely and will take appropriate action to help protect customers."
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft