On June 30, a Windows vulnerability was made known and called Windows Print Spooler Remote Code Execution Vulnerability, or CVE-2021-34527, and referred to as “PrintNightmare”. Several possible PrintNightmare fixes became known which are discussed below for compatibility with Tricerat printing products
Updates from Microsoft
On July 6, 2021, Microsoft released emergency patches to address the vulnerability. After preliminary testing at Tricerat, ScrewDrivers® is compatible with this Microsoft update and can safely be applied to desktops and servers. It is strongly advised to test this update with ScrewDrivers in your environment to confirm functionality prior to large-scale rollout. While these patches address the initial vulnerability, they do not completely fix the PrintNightmare issue.
Denying Access to Spool Folder
The blog truesec reported another attempted PrintNightmare fix that creates an explicit deny permission for SYSTEM on the spool folder. This alone will break Tricerat ScrewDrivers printing if done on VDI, terminal servers, or print servers. To use this permission setting with Tricerat, modify the permissions specifically on the following files to allow SYSTEM to have full control permissions.
v7:
C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\3\ScrewDriversDrv.dll
C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\3\ScrewDriversUI.dll
v6:
C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\3\sd6drv.dll
C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\x64\3\sd6ui.dll
Disabling the Print Spooler
The initial recommendation from Microsoft was to turn off the print spooler service. Be advised that if the print spooler is turned off on the session desktop, print server, or remote desktop client, printing will not work. This applies to Tricerat ScrewDrivers and any other type of printing.
