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Third-Party Vendor Issues Temporary Patch For Windows Vulnerability (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: "A vulnerability discovered by Google Project Zero security researchers and left without a patch by Microsoft received a temporary fix from third-party security vendor ACROS Security," according to Bleeping Computer. Microsoft is set to officially patch the flaw on March 15, after it previously pushed back February's Patch Tuesday for next month.
"According to Google researchers, attackers could leverage malformed EMF files to expose data found in the victim's memory, which can then be leveraged to bypass ASLR protection and execute code on the user's computer... ACROS Security has issued a temporary patch that can be applied to Windows computers via its product, called 0patch, a platform that applies fixes for zero-days, unpatched vulnerabilities, end-of-life and unsupported products, for legacy OSes, vulnerable 3rd party components, and customized software." When Microsoft issues an official update, the temporary patch will stop working immediately.
"According to Google researchers, attackers could leverage malformed EMF files to expose data found in the victim's memory, which can then be leveraged to bypass ASLR protection and execute code on the user's computer... ACROS Security has issued a temporary patch that can be applied to Windows computers via its product, called 0patch, a platform that applies fixes for zero-days, unpatched vulnerabilities, end-of-life and unsupported products, for legacy OSes, vulnerable 3rd party components, and customized software." When Microsoft issues an official update, the temporary patch will stop working immediately.
Because they need to make sure the patch won't screw up something else?
Or at least, that's one of the excuses they give.
So you have never changed a value in some binary to skip a routine or something? It is relatively easy to change a conditional jump to an unconditional jump or noop if you know a little reverse engineering, crackers used to do such things all the time to bypass things like disk checks.