• MS-DEFCON 2: Print Nightmare causes printing nightmares

    AskWoody Plus Alert Logo
    ISSUE 18.25.1 • 2021-07-07

    PATCH WATCH

    MS-DEFCON Level 2

    By Susan Bradley

    Microsoft has released an emergency update for a Print Spooler vulnerability.

    Consumer and home users

    Microsoft has released an out of band update for a recent vulnerability that is being referred to as  “Print Nightmare.”

    Zebra Label printers have been impacted by this out-of-band patch. The only remedy is to uninstall the update. Because I don’t see active attacks on home users at this time, I recommend that you hold off installing this update. In fact, I’ll probably wait until the July updates come out next week before encouraging you to install any patches. Next week’s updates will include these fixes; there is no urgent need to install them right now.

    Business users

    For businesses with Active Directory, disable the print spooler service on your domain controllers.

    It only impacts “clean up jobs” for printing artifacts and I suggest keeping this service disabled going forward. Reports suggest that the patch does not fully provide all protections for networks, so it’s best to keep print spoolers disabled in the short term. More testing and evaluation is required.

    References

    Read the full story in the AskWoody Plus Newsletter 18.25.1 (2021-07-07).