The Patching Friars' AlmanacA calendar of CVE saints

May 14

BlueKeepHoly card for bluekeep, generated with AI (Claude, Anthropic) for the Lunario dei Frati Patchatori.CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 RDP BlueKeep VERMIS AD PORTAM
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⚔ Commemorated today: The Scourge of Ireland's Health Service (2021)

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Saint BlueKeep, Who Could Have Become a Worm

Patron of exposed Remote Desktop servers, systems past end of life, and patches released even for the departed.

Life

On 14 May 2019 Microsoft fixed BlueKeep (CVE-2019-0708), a flaw in Remote Desktop Services that an attacker could exploit without authentication, remotely, with nothing but the RDP port open. It was "wormable": able to spread on its own from machine to machine, as WannaCry had. The fear was such that Microsoft shipped updates even for Windows XP and 2003, long out of support.

Prayer

O Saint BlueKeep, who could have crawled from server to server, let our remote desktops ask who is knocking before they open. Amen.

How to celebrate

Celebrated by installing the May 2019 patch, enabling Network Level Authentication and taking RDP off the Internet.

Open RDP port, worm at the door.

Technical record

Disclosed on
May 14 2019
CVE
CVE-2019-0708
CVSS
9.8Actively exploited (CISA KEV)
Product
Microsoft · Windows

A remote code execution vulnerability exists in Remote Desktop Services formerly known as Terminal Services when an unauthenticated attacker connects to the target system using RDP and sends specially crafted requests, aka 'Remote Desktop Services Remote Code Execution Vulnerability'.

Sources: microsoft.com · x.com

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