Microsoft patches Windows security flaw exploited by North Korean hackers — but is it too late?

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As part of its latest Patch Tuesday cumulative update, Microsoft fixed a privilege escalation bug in the Windows Ancillary Function Driver (AFD.sys) for WinSock. This bug is tracked as CVE-2024-38193, and carries a severity score of 7.8.

Abusing this flaw apparently grants attackers admin privileges on the vulnerable endpoint, with Microsoft noting, "an attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain SYSTEM privileges."