Microsoft has warned that optional pre-release Windows updates will roll back resolution of Windows Server printing issues on non-compatible devices, which could lead to broken printing systems.
Read also: best laptop for Excel review (2022)
The corresponding update was released in July 2021. It fixed an issue where printing and scanning would fail on several versions of Windows Server on Windows Domain Controllers (DCs).
The issue affected printers, scanners, and multifunction devices that are not compliant with CVE-2021-33764 security changes and use Smart Card Authentication (PIV).
"Affected devices are printers, scanners, and multifunction devices that authenticate smart cards that do not support either Diffie-Hellman (DH) for key exchange during PKINIT Kerberos authentication, or do not advertise support for des-ede3-cbc ('triple DES ') during a Kerberos AS request," Microsoft explained.
As noted by the company, all affected smart card authentication devices will work properly and will not be affected when using username/password authentication.
Microsoft has stated that the interim fix has now been disabled with this week's optional pre-release updates on Windows Server 2019 systems. This change will result in print and scan failures in Windows environments with incompatible devices.
“Starting July 21, 2022, this temporary remedy will no longer be available for security updates. The July 2022 Windows Preview Update will remove temporary protection and will require compatible printing and scanning devices,” the company said in a statement.
Temporary mitigation will also be removed on all affected versions of Windows Server (Windows Server 2019, 2016, 2012, and 2008) with security updates that will be released on August 9, 2022.
"All updates released on or after this date will not be able to use temporary mitigation," Microsoft explains in an updated support document. - "Printers and scanners with smart card authentication must comply with Section 3.2.1 of the RFC 4556 specification required for CVE-2021-33764 after these updates are installed or later on Active Directory Domain Controllers."
Administrators should check the logs of their Active Directory domain controllers for audit events identifying non-RFC-4456 printers added since the deployment of the Windows Server February 2022 Updates.
In 2021, users of older versions of Windows were faced with the fact that their printers began to print some elements of documents as solid black or colored rectangles or did not print at all. Also, users began to have problems printing barcodes, QR codes and graphic elements, such as logos - instead of them, completely black blocks appeared.
In March 2021, Microsoft fixed printing issues that occurred after installing security updates in Windows 7, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2008, and Windows Server 2012.
In October 2021, it was reported that a bug in Windows 11 only allowed administrators to print. It prompted for administrator credentials before every print attempt. The bug affected Windows environments where clients and print servers are in different time zones.
Michael Zippo
2022/07/24
https://linkedin.com/in/michael-zippo-9136441b1
[email protected]
Sources: Python.Engineering, docs.microsoft.com
