A very light week for security patching, but don't relax too much. We have been told that Microsoft will announce two new vulnerabilities on Tuesday, September 14, one of which is rated "critical" and will affect Windows and Office and several other MS products. How do we know? MS gave advanced warning to their "premium" customers.
Some of the vendor white papers offered this week are very interesting - - worth the effort to fill out their registration form.
Alan
@RISK is the SANS community's consensus bulletin summarizing the most important vulnerabilities and exploits identified during the past week and providing guidance on appropriate actions to protect your systems (PART I). It also includes a comprehensive list of all new vulnerabilities discovered in the past week (PART II).
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******************** Security Training Update *************************
Featured Training program of the Week: SANS Cyber Defense Initiative CDI is in two parts: CDI South in New Orleans November 1-4 ( http://www.sans.org/cdisouth04) and CDI East in Washington, DC, December 7-14 ( http://www.sans.org/cdieast04)
New Orleans offers a whole new type of program that many people have asked us to provide: 18 one and two day courses on issues shaping the future of information security, from the newest hacker tools to changes in legal issues surrounding security. Perfect for people who have taken SANS courses and want updates and for people who just don't have time to attend a full class. On the other hand, Washington offers 13 full length immersion courses an a few short courses.
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Part I is compiled by the security team at TippingPoint (www.tippingpoint.com) as a by-product of that company's continuous effort to ensure that its intrusion prevention products effectively block exploits using known vulnerabilities. TippingPoint's analysis is complemented by input from a council of security managers from twelve large organizations who confidentially share with SANS the specific actions they have taken to protect their systems. A detailed description of the process may be found at http://www.sans.org/newsletters/cva/#process
Description: The Winamp media player reportedly contains a buffer overflow in its ActiveX control that can be triggered by passing a specially crafted parameter to the control's "AppendFileToPlayList" function. A malicious webpage or an email may possibly exploit this flaw to execute arbitrary code on a client system. Proof-of-concept code has been publicly posted.
Status: Vendor not confirmed, no patches available. A workaround would be to set the "kill" bit for the Winamp ActiveX control.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is in use at three of the reporting council sites. Two sites have notified their system support staff of the problem. No other action is planned at this time since a patch is not available. The third site is aware of users who have installed the software, but since their central support staff does not support the software, no action is planned.
Description: Apple has released a security update for multiple Mac OS X client and server versions. The update fixes a number of vulnerabilities in various software components including Kerberos, Apache and Lukemftpd that may be exploited by remote attackers to execute arbitrary code. The update also fixes vulnerabilities in the CoreFoundation component that may be exploited locally to escalate privileges. The technical details for many of the flaws have been posted previously on the security mailing lists.
Council Site Actions: Three of the reporting council sites are using the affected software. One site plans to deploy the patch/update after they have resolved issues discovered during their patch regression testing. They sited issues with hanging on initial reboot and Safari. The second site notified their Mac support staff and the third site said that the majority of their systems have already been patched through the Software Update Facility.
Description: MailWorksPro software is designed to handle large email lists, and provides a web-based front end for its management. The software contains a vulnerability that may be exploited to obtain an unauthorized administrative access. The access can be obtained by simply setting the "uid" and "auth" cookie variables in the login request. Since the software is used for managing large mailing lists, it may be a likely target for attack by spammers.
Status: Vendor confirmed, patch available. A workaround is to block access to the MailWorksPro webserver from the Internet.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or widespread use at any of the council sites. They reported that no action was necessary.
Description: Altnet Download Manager is designed to facilitate and accelerate user downloads. The software is bundled with the widely deployed peer-to-peer network applications like KaZaa and Grokster. This download manager contains a stack-based buffer overflow in its ActiveX control's "IsValidFile" function, which be triggered by a specially crafted 'bstrFilepath' parameter. A malicious webpage or an HTML email may exploit this vulnerability to execute arbitrary code on a client system. The technical details have been publicly posted.
Status: Vendor confirmed, a new version can be downloaded from the vendor's homepage at http://www.altnet.com.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or supported use at any of the council sites; although several sites reported a small user base. Because the software is not supported by their IT departments, no action is planned.
Description: mpg123 is an mpeg audio player for Unix/Linux systems and ships with a number of Linux flavors. The player can be configured as the default helper application (for mp3 files) for the web browsers. This player contains a buffer overflow in the "do_layer2()" function of its mpeg decoder. The flaw can be exploited by a malicious mp3 file to execute arbitrary code on a client system. The technical details regarding the flaw have been posted.
Status: Vendor not confirmed, an unofficial patch is included in the discoverer's posting.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or supported use at any of the council sites. Although several sites reported having a small user base; they do not plan any action.
Description: Trillian is a widely used instant messenger client that can interoperate with multiple messenger programs such as Yahoo!, MSN, ICQ etc. The client contains a buffer overflow in its MSN module that can be triggered by an overlong server response (over 4096 bytes). The flaw can be exploited to execute arbitrary code on the client system. However, to exploit this flaw, an attacker has to conduct a man-in-the-middle attack, after a client establishes a connection with the MSN server. The exploit code has been publicly posted.
Status: Vendor has been contacted, no patches available yet.
Council Site Actions: The affected software is not in production or supported use at any of the council sites; although several sites reported having a small user base. One did scan their network for the backdoor on port 5555 to identify any impacted clients. Several other sites notified their system support staff.
This list is compiled by Qualys ( www.qualys.com ) as part of that company's ongoing effort to ensure its vulnerability management web service tests for all known vulnerabilities that can be scanned. As of this week Qualys scans for 3707 unique vulnerabilities. For this special SANS community listing, Qualys also includes vulnerabilities that cannot be scanned remotely.
(c) 2004. All rights reserved. The information contained in this newsletter, including any external links, is provided "AS IS," with no express or implied warranty, for informational purposes only. In some cases, copyright for material in this newsletter may be held by a party other than Qualys (as indicated herein) and permission to use such material must be requested from the copyright owner.
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