Legacy Vulnerabilities Still Hiding in Modern Endpoints

 

Defender – Intune

 

Modern Management and old problems

I typically review the vulnerabilities and examine the recommendations in Microsoft Defender. I know it is a long list. However, I haven’t come to mind, but I will still see some legacy vulnerabilities there.

 

Even in a modern Intune and Microsoft Defender environment, legacy software configurations can persist quietly and lower your Threat & Vulnerability Management for Easier Identification, I call it (TVM) score than expected.

Recently, while reviewing Defender TVM reports, I noticed three vulnerabilities that stood out:

·         Disable Flash on Adobe Acrobat Pro XI

·         Disable Flash on Adobe Reader DC

·         Block outdated ActiveX controls for Internet Explorer

·         Block webpages from automatically running Flash plugins

·         Disable JavaScript on Adobe Acrobat Pro XI

At first glance, these seem outdated—after all, Flash has been discontinued since 2021—but these findings highlight a reality for IT admins even when an application is long gone, sometimes its configuration remnants or registry keys may still exist, tricking Defender into thinking the vulnerability is still active.

 

Discovery: How Defender Found Them

Using the Microsoft Defender Vulnerability Management dashboard, Defender> Endpoints>Recommendations, I identified several devices flagged with these three vulnerabilities.




By diving into the device inventory, I saw:

  • No visible “Flash” software installed.
  • No active Adobe updates pending.
  • But registry keys still referencing Flash components or JavaScript enablement remained in the user and machine hives.

Defender detects these vulnerabilities through configuration state checks, not active file scans.
That means for example,

  • Even if Acrobat XI is gone, leftover keys like
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\FeatureLockDown\bEnableFlash
    or
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\DC\FeatureLockDown\bEnableFlash
    may still exist.
  • Similarly, JavaScript enablement is stored under
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat Reader\11.0\FeatureLockDown\bDisableJavaScript.

So, Defender’s “Disable Flash” or “Disable JavaScript” findings can persist even if the program is no longer used, because the registry state remains vulnerable.

Screenshots from the Defender. 











Remediation: Intune

I went through many of these above problems, and I will mention just an example of how to remediate some of these issue not all, because you got the point.

Adobe Pro XI: I used a script to configure the registry key and correct the value.

$RegistryPaths = @(

    "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat\11.0\FeatureLockDown",

    "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\Acrobat\11.0\FeatureLockDown"

)

Get the full Script from GitHub

The result is




Disable Flash on Adobe Reader DC,  I used the script for that one too, to change the value on the Registry Key, both 32 and 64 bit

"HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Adobe\$($Base.Product)\$($Base.Version)\FeatureLockDown",

        "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Policies\Adobe\$($Base.Product)\$($Base.Version)\FeatureLockDown"

 

Get the full Script from GitHub






Block webpages from automatically running Flash plugins, By running the script to configure registry Keys for Google Chrome








Get the full Script from GitHub

 

What key takeaways from this test

·         Even in fully patched environments, legacy configurations can still be seen as vulnerabilities.

·         Some Microsoft Defender recommendations provide visibility, but some remediation requires registry-level cleanup.

·         Regularly check Defender for vulnerabilities and audit registry-based settings to ensure that future OS or app upgrades do not reintroduce these issues.



Thanks for reading, and have a saved environment 👍🏻










Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New LAPS for Windows 11 24H2

Image
  Windows LAPS automatically manages and backs up the password of a local administrator account on devices joined to Microsoft Entra ID (formerly Azure AD) or Windows Server Active Directory. This feature helps protect against pass-the-hash and lateral-traversal attacks, enhances security for remote help desk scenarios, and facilitates device recovery if they become inaccessible.   As many of you know, LAPS for Entra joined devices was announced around 2023 and has worked perfectly since then on Entra, Hybrid, joined, and On-premises devices via AD as well. One of the big challenges we all know is that the first version (if I can say that) of LAPS did not allow you to create a new custom admin account or change the existing admin account, which meant we had to use custom configuration or scripts to do that.   Microsoft announced the new LAPS about 3 weeks ago via Arnab Mitra, Sr. Program Manager at Microsoft, and it was a great announcement. Let us go ahead and co...
Read more

Windows Autopatch Hotpatch

Image
Windows Autopatch Hotpatch I am sure all of you guys are about to get busy for Thanksgiving! this is a short blog about Hotpatch. This morning, while I was checking for updates regarding my tenants and looking for the new hardware inventory setting, I was pleased to see that the new setting “ Hotpatch for Windows ” had appeared in my tenant. Before we discuss it, let’s first go over the details. We are all familiar with quality updates and the security patches released on the second Tuesday of each month. Microsoft has created a hotpatch for Windows 11 24H2 that allows these updates to be applied without requiring a restart. Typically, after monthly updates, the device must restart to install all security patches and to update the build number (the last four digits of Windows). According to Microsoft, there will be two types of updates each quarter. The first update will occur in January, April, July, and October and will include a full security patch and new features, requiring the de...
Read more

How to block TikTok or other social media

Image
Have you considered blocking social media platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and others on corporate devices?   Many government entities in our community want to restrict access to social media on their official devices rather than personally owned devices (BYOD). There are several reasons for this. For example, in the USA, TikTok was blocked and unblocked.   There are many ways to do this, such as Firewall, Network, Microsoft Defender, and so on. However, I will discuss how to do it via Intune. Create a Policy:         Create a New Policy: Name it as you want and add the description.     Configuration settings > add settings > and search for “URL blocking” and pick both Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge. And pick the one for the device, not the user, did not work for me. Then add the URL you want to block to “ Block access to a list of URLs (Device)”. I went a little further by disallowing the users to run the TikTok application “...
Read more