CVE-2024-49019: 
vulnerability analysis and mitigation

Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) Elevation of Privilege Vulnerability, identified as CVE-2024-49019, was discovered and disclosed in November 2024. This critical vulnerability affects Microsoft Windows Server systems and their Active Directory Certificate Services component. The vulnerability was assigned a CVSS score of 7.8 (High) and primarily impacts various versions of Windows Server, including Server 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2019 (NVD, MITRE).

The vulnerability exploits a feature in version 1 certificate templates, allowing attackers with enrollment rights to manipulate certificate requests. The flaw enables attackers to craft Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs) that include application policies that take precedence over the configured Extended Key Usage attributes specified in the template. This manipulation allows unauthorized requests for client authentication, certificate request agent, or code-signing certificates by exploiting the WebServer template (SecurityOnline).

The vulnerability can lead to significant privilege escalation within affected systems. When successfully exploited, attackers can gain domain administrator privileges and perform unauthorized actions such as code signing with illegitimate certificates. Research indicates that approximately 10 out of 15 tested environments were vulnerable to this exploit (SecurityOnline).

Microsoft has released security patches as part of their November Patch Tuesday update. Key mitigation strategies include restricting enrollment permissions to necessary accounts only, removing unused templates, and implementing certificate manager approvals. Organizations are advised to ensure that the 'Source of subject name' is not set to 'Supplied in the request' for version 1 templates (SecurityOnline).