Microsoft has released a security alert outlining a vulnerability with its web server technology that, if exploited, could block or slow down the entire system.
The denial of service (DoS) issue, first detected by F5 Networks' Gal Goldshtein, affects HTTP/2 connections to the Microsoft's Internet Information Services (IIS) platform, built for use with the Windows NT operating system.
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Malicious HTTP/2 requests can be sent to a Windows Server running IIS, which would lead to the systems CPU usage to spike to 100% until the malicious connections are killed by IIS, the firm outlined in its advisory published yesterday.
"The HTTP/2 specification allows clients to specify any number of SETTINGS frames with any number of SETTINGS parameters," the security alert said.
"In some situations, excessive settings can cause services to become unstable and may result in a temporary CPU usage spike until the connection timeout is reached and the connection is closed."
Microsoft has not identified any mitigations or workaround as of yet, but are advising users to install a February 'non-security update', and review a 'knowledge base article', which at the time of writing links to a 404 page-not-found error message.
The firm has also attempted to mitigate the vulnerability by giving users the functionality to define thresholds on settings parameters included in an HTTP/2 request.
After patching their systems with recently-released cumulative updates, Microsoft added, system administrators can customise the HTTP/2 settings threshold and prevent the bug from slowing down or blocking their IIS web services.
Microsoft has had to contend with a number of high profile vulnerabilities recently, especially during the rollout of major upgrades to its Windows 10 operating system. This has led to the firm already commencing early beta testing for a major update due in 2020, much earlier than the process would normally begin.
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