The UK National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) issued an alert on October 16, 2020, to raise awareness “of a new remote code execution vulnerability (CVE – 2020 – 16952)”, which affects Microsoft’s SharePoint product. According to the alert, “successful exploitation of this vulnerability would allow an attacker to run arbitrary code and to carry out security actions in the context of the local administrator on affected installations of SharePoint server.”
The NCSC recommends applying security updates promptly, “but in this case the NCSC has previously seen a large number of exploitations of SharePoint vulnerabilities…against UK organisations…NCSC is issuing this alert to ensure that system owners are aware of this vulnerability and to ensure remediation actions are taken.”
According to the alert, the vulnerability affects:
- Microsoft SharePoint Foundation 2013 Service Pack 1
- Microsoft SharePoint Enterprise Server 2016
- Microsoft SharePoint server 2019
It is important to note that SharePoint online, which is part of Office 365 is not affected by the vulnerability.
The NCSC “strongly advises that organisations refer to the Microsoft guidance…and ensure the necessary updates are installed in affected SharePoint products. It is also important to keep informed of any possible updated future updates to the guidance…”
[View source.]
