Patch Tuesday: KB3002657 Causing Authentication Problems with Exchange Other Apps

For the first couple days after March's Patch Tuesday, things were pretty quiet. For some this tends to indicate that Microsoft could have been moderately successful in delivering updates without problems for the first time in years. But, the first couple days have now become test and patch for companies with policies and procedures in place and patch and pray for the others.

Microsoft spent much of its March collateral fixing up old issues. Things like fuzzy fonts, VPN problems, Excel forms controls issues, and an evolved Stuxnet were addressed. But, amid the fixes, a couple new problems were introduced. The first is a reboot loop caused by KB3033929 that affects only some customers with specific configurations.

Over the weekend, we've learned about a new issue of which you need to be aware.

KB3002657, which addresses a NETLOGON vulnerability, is causing connection issues for customers still running Windows Server 2003 and using NTLM for authentication.

A post by Jason Sherry, MVP and Microsoft Infrastructure Architect and Professional Services Consultant, details the issues that he's discovered. Some of the applications and services affected by this update are: SMB/SMB2/SMB3, IIS, SharePoint, Exchange, SQL, and AD authentication for Windows 2003 domain controllers.

Here's the specific Security Bulletin associated with this issue:

Some additional references and reports: