MS14-025: An Update for Group Policy Preferences

MS14-025: An Update for Group Policy Preferences

Today, we released an update to address a vulnerability in Group Policy Preferences (MS14-025). Group Policy Preferences was an addition made to Group Policy to extend its capabilities. Among other things, Group Policy Preferences allows an administrator to configure: Local administrator accounts (name of the account, account password, etc) Configure a service or scheduled task (allowed to specify alternate credentials to run as) Mount network drives when a user logs in (allowed to specify alternate credentials to connect with) Group Policy Preferences are distributed just like normal group policy: An XML file containing the settings is written to the SYSVOL share of the domain controllers, and computers periodically query the SYSVOL share (authenticating to it using their computer account) for updates to the group policy.