New Sitecore 8.2 & Sitecore 9 Security Patch

I guess I’m on a security hardening binge for 2019, since I’ll share a hot-off-the-presses security hardening measure from Sitecore today. I don’t want to say too much about the vulnerability, but this article explains in general terms and applying it to all Sitecore server roles for version 8.2 through any current 9 releases is emphasized as the best practice. I’d do it at the next opportunity.

I created a gist with the PowerShell necessary to apply this patch, just update line #8 with the path to your Sitecore website:

	Set-ExecutionPolicy –Scope Process –ExecutionPolicy Bypass
	Import-Module WebAdministration
	$url = "https://kb.sitecore.net/~/media/7A638A36A71D4494981A8655E297AD23.ashx?la=en"
	$tempLocation = "C:\tempLocation"
	$zippedPatch = "$tempLocation\SitecoreSupportPackage.302938.zip"
	$unzippedPatch = "$tempLocation\SitecoreSupportPackage"
	$sitecoreRoot = "C:\InetPub\Your\Sitecore\Website"
	if (!(Test-Path $tempLocation))
	{
	New-Item –ItemType Directory –Path $tempLocation
	}
	Invoke-WebRequest –Uri $url –OutFile $zippedPatch
	Expand-Archive –Path $zippedPatch –DestinationPath $unzippedPatch –Force
	Copy-Item "$unzippedPatch/website/*" –Destination $sitecoreRoot –Recurse –Force
	Write-Host "Patch applied to $sitecoreRoot"
	Remove-Item $unzippedPatch –Recurse
	Remove-Item $zippedPatch –Recurse

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SitecoreSecurityPatch.SC2019-001-302938.ps1

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Our team has internal automation taking the above a bit further and using another layer of abstraction, and that’s secret Rackspace sauce I won’t share publicly,  but the snippet above should have your environment patched in just a few seconds.

One of the key elements to the patch involves an update to the /sitecore/admin/logs.aspx page which, if you dig into it, reveals a grip-load of additional C# validation logic and other stuff going on . . .

There’s a lot to unpack in there if you’re curious, but suffice it to say that Sitecore’s keeping all your bases covered and isn’t trusting user input (using a broad interpretation of that principle).