Microsoft just closed out its Patch Tuesday updates for 2024 by releasing fixes for 72 security flaws across its software portfolio: 17 rated Critical, 52 rated Important and one rated Moderate, and one that has been actively exploited in the wild. According to the cybersecurity firm Forta, Microsoft has resolved up to 1,088 vulnerabilities in 2024.
The vulnerability that Microsoft discovered is currently being exploited by hackers (tracked as CVE-2024-49138) is a privilege escalation flaw in the Windows common log file system (CLFS) driver which could be leveraged by an attacker to gain system privileges. Microsoft credits CrowdStrike for discovering and reporting the flaw, which is the fifth actively exploited CLFS privilege escalation flaw since 2022 – and the ninth vulnerability in the same component to receive a patch this year.
