{"id":1045,"date":"2020-01-15T16:21:47","date_gmt":"2020-01-15T14:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/news\/?p=1045"},"modified":"2026-06-08T23:17:34","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T23:17:34","slug":"alert-microsoft-cryptography-vulnerability","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/emerging-threats\/alert-microsoft-cryptography-vulnerability\/","title":{"rendered":"ALERT \u2014 Microsoft cryptography systems vulnerability"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: justify\">On 14 January, the <strong><em>National Security Agency<\/em> (NSA)<\/strong> issued a notice detailing a vulnerability affecting Microsoft Windows systems (<strong>Windows 10, Windows Server 2016\/2019<\/strong>).<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">The vulnerability (<a href=\"https:\/\/portal.msrc.microsoft.com\/en-US\/security-guidance\/advisory\/CVE-2020-0601\">CVE-2020-0601<\/a>) impacts certificate validation processes and may be exploited through multiple vectors and attack paths:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>HTTPS connections<\/li>\n<li>files and emails <em>signed with certificates<\/em><\/li>\n<li>executables <em>signed with certificates<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Mitigation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\">We recommend maintaining current patch levels by applying the current month&#8217;s security updates as soon as possible, increasing monitoring intensity on critical systems and particularly on systems exposed to public networks. Organizations managing complex certificate infrastructures should consider engaging <a href=\"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/en\/cybersecurity-advisory\/\">Cybersecurity Advisory<\/a> resources to validate their validation chain implementations against this class of cryptographic bypass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/fortgale.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/01\/doc.png?fit=750%2C475&amp;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1049\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><figcaption><a href=\"https:\/\/media.defense.gov\/2020\/Jan\/14\/2002234275\/-1\/-1\/0\/CSA-WINDOWS-10-CRYPT-LIB-20190114.PDF\">Media Defense Gov<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n<p>Microsoft Security Advisory:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/portal.msrc.microsoft.com\/en-US\/security-guidance\/advisory\/CVE-2020-0601\">https:\/\/portal.msrc.microsoft.com\/en-US\/security-guidance\/advisory\/CVE-2020-0601<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>CVE-2020-0601 (CurveBall): Microsoft Windows certificate validation vulnerability, exploitation primitives, NSA disclosure and remediation steps.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1047,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[27,3356,3357,3355,92,246],"class_list":["post-1045","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-emerging-threats","tag-alert","tag-certificate-validation","tag-cryptographic-vulnerability","tag-curveball","tag-cve-2020-0601","tag-nsa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1045"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9927,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1045\/revisions\/9927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1045"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1045"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fortgale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1045"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}