Description

CISA has removed a Windows security flaw from its catalog of known exploited vulnerabilities due to Active Directory authentication issues caused by the May 2022 updates. Flaw tracked as CVE-2022-26925, is actively exploited LSA spoofing zero-day, and confirmed as new PetitPotam Windows NTLM Relay attack vector. Attackers abuse CVE-2022-26925 remotely to force domain controllers to authenticate them via the Windows NT LAN Manager (NTLM) security protocol. However, Microsoft patches two elevations of privilege vulnerabilities in Windows Kerberos and AD Domain Services that cause service authentication problems. Before being removed from the known exploited vulnerability catalog, all FCEB agencies were required to apply the security updates within June 1, 2022. Installing May 2022 month's security updates will trigger the AD auth issues since admins can't choose to install any one of the security updates, as Microsoft does not provide a separate installer for each security issue. As CISA says installation of updates on client Windows devices and non-domain controller Windows Servers will not cause this issue. Until Microsoft issues an official update to address the AD auth issue, manually mapping certificates to a machine account in AD is recommended. If the preferred mitigation will not work in your environment, please refer KB5014754 Certificate based authentication changes. Any other mitigation will lower or disable security hardening.